Arable land scarcity and inefficient livelihood strategies are Sub Saharan Africa
phenomena posing a challenge of rural chronic poverty in the 21st Century. This
study analysed the link between land access, livelihood strategies (LS) and
household well-being (HWBS) in land scarce areas, Mvomero District, Tanzania.
Specifically, it determined: land access and associated factors, effect of land access
on LS, influence of LS on HWBS and the impacts of land access on HWBS. A crosssectional
research design was adopted whereby a survey was conducted involving
267 households. In addition, focus group discussions and key informant interviews
were conducted. Qualitative results demonstrated that the majority of households
lacked secure access to land. While lack of irrigation schemes hindered land access
in densely populated areas by discouraging settlement in land abundant villages, land
grabbing perpetuated by weak tenure security, monetary poverty and non compliance
to land laws limited land access in land abundant villages. In addition, there was high
interdependency between farm and non-farm strategies but lack of capital for
undertaking high paying LS confined households to survival strategies. Binary and
multinomial logistic regression results indicated that income, productive assets and
location had a significant influence (p < 0.05) on land access. Furthermore, distance
to farm and number of plots demonstrated a significant influence on non-farm LS.
Moreover, land size and location exhibited the highest influence on the likelihood for
a household to be well-off followed by LS diversification, and number of
dependants. It is concluded that, land grabbing and lack of irrigation water lead to
insecure access to land which in turn force households to venture in irrational LS as
they lack inadequate capital for meaningful diversification of LS thus, failure to
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attain well-being. Furthermore, female headed households and those possessing
many dependants are disadvantaged in attaining well-being. Tanzania government is
advised to enforce adherence to land laws and invest in irrigation infrastructure in
migrants’ destinations to enhance secure access to land. It may possibly facilitate
access to skills, savings and credit to augment rational diversification of LS while
paying special attention to female headed households and those with many
dependants