COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNANACE AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES MA PROGRAM IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES (SPECIALIZATION IN DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT)

Abstract

Today the concern of urban poverty is a common agenda and a serious issue of the globe. Particularly, it is the serious problem in developing country. In Ethiopia, poverty is the critical development challenges facing the country. The general objective of this study is to examine and explain the challenges and prospects of urban poverty reduction at welkite town, guraghe zone. The specific objectives of the study are assessing the socioeconomic factors contributing to urban poverty; explain the challenges of urban poverty reduction at the wolkite town evaluate the effectiveness of current poverty reduction strategies and identify community-led initiatives and their impact in the study area. To answer the study objectives, data were collected by a structured questionnaire from 396 respondents’ selected using simple random sampling technique and analyzed by statistical software packages such as STATA and Microsoft Excel. Thus, depending on the study the primary socio-economic factors contributing to urban poverty in wolkite town, the challenges and prospects of poverty reduction in the town, local government policies impact poverty alleviation efforts, effectiveness of community participation at poverty reduction in the town, barriers that are residents face in accessing basic services such as healthcare, sanitation, and housing and what type of successful poverty reduction strategies were implemented at the town was analyzed. Budget allocation and implementation also needs to reconsider for the support of urban poor’s for creating opportunities to turnout from poverty line. Unusual assumptions for being poor should be considered in policy implementation and the advantage of community and non-governmental organizations participation at urban poverty reduction activities probably impacted the success of the task, lack of accessible and quality education and, dependency on few opportunities that are implemented by government, lack of job opportunities specially for youths, lack of infrastructure to support small and medium enterprises etc. were the major factors contributed for urban poverty . Because of the seriousness of the problem measures like improve housing and transportation infrastructure to address the high housing, strengthen healthcare services to improve healthcare accessibility, boost government and community collaboration, support food security and livelihood programs to combat food insecurity and Promote sustainable development practices to address concerns over the sustainability of poverty reduction programs