Migration survival strategies and poverty alleviation: the case of Makete district.

The aim of the study was to examine the Migration Survival Strategies and Poverty Alleviation among migrants in Makete. It examines the struggle of the people of Makete District to break away from poverty since the early 1970s. They attempted to adopt various strategies, initially agriculture and wage employment. However, these strategies were not elective, finally adopted migration to business in different parts of the country as survival strategy. But, this study involved only the migrants who migrated from Makete and engaged in business in Mbeya City. The study interviewed 150 of business households and adopted various approaches in collecting data on Migration Survival Strategies and Poverty Alleviation. The findings of the study indicated that business was the principal factor for out migration, this was due to the fact that the majority of the households had long tradition in business in their wards of their origins. Also, the study found that the sources household's capital was divided into two initial and current sources of capital. The initial source of capital was agriculture and changed to business as main source contributing more 95%. The household's started with small amount of capital of less than Tshs 50000/= and increased tremendously to being more than Tshs 10,000,000/= As whole, this change in occupation and migration Structure indicated that there was a strong association between business and poverty alleviation with reference to poverty reduction indicators such as the per capita income, properties such as vehicles, land, house and amount of remittances to the place of origin. Basing on the findings of the study, several recommendations can be made and these include the organizations which deal with business of the households such as Tanzania Revenue Authority should encourage them to establish more businesses. The Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) in Tanzania such as MKUKUTA policies that would provide the link between the place of origin and destination for mutual development through remittances and providing proper infrastructures.