390
Value for Money
Apart from the fact there are times when the tent dryer is not in use due to scarcity
of fish, when fish is available the holding capacity of dryer is not enough for all FPs.
Thus, tracking of income improvements is not consistent. Furthermore, it was
discovered that the project had not tracked the incomes of the fish processors who
were benefiting from the solar dryer, implying that there were no assessments conducted by the project to appreciate the monetary value of the investment in the communities. There are no figures of how many people are currently using the dryer,
how much they earned before the project and how much they earned after its introduction. The committee at the tent dryer were instructed to keep a record; however,
they were not consistent in this task and estimated that 35 FPs were using the dryer.
The study showed that 44% of the FPs’ profit was attributed to the usage of solar
dryers during the peak season and 31% during off-peak season. During the peak
season, the attributed proportion is higher which assumes more frequent usage of
the dryer, and the opposite is true for the off-peak season. The data corresponds with
the field observations that the dryer was empty during the week of data collection.
The FGD participants expressed that fish catches were low at the time, and thus
proportions during data collection were lower.
It is worth noting that some of the main activities of the SEED-Fish project were
not fulfilled, largely because these activities were dependent on research conducted
under the project. The disadvantage of implementing research projects that directly
affect livelihoods is the overlooking of challenges that the research process might
face during the implementation period. The emphasis on research thus overshadowed the impact of the technologies on the livelihoods of fish processors.
Diversification and Resilience
The fish processors said they also engaged in some small-scale businesses, but these
did not compare to the fish processing business in terms of income. To verify this,
respondents’ income from fish processing and that from their other sources of
income were compared. The average contribution of fish processing to the total
income of the respondents was 83%, though it ranged between 2% and 100%. In
determining income diversification, Simpson’s diversity index (Simpson 1949) was
used to measure the extent to which sources of income were diversified. The index
ranges between 0 and 1, with 0 indicating no diversification of the total number of
sources of income from one entity and 1 being the highest level of income source
diversification. Diversity was measured at 0.98 which showed that the sources of
income were highly diversified, making the FPs’ income activities sustainable for
their livelihoods.
F. W. Kayamba-Phiri et al.
Value for Money
Apart from the fact there are times when the tent dryer is not in use due to scarcity
of fish, when fish is available the holding capacity of dryer is not enough for all FPs.
Thus, tracking of income improvements is not consistent. Furthermore, it was
discovered that the project had not tracked the incomes of the fish processors who
were benefiting from the solar dryer, implying that there were no assessments conducted by the project to appreciate the monetary value of the investment in the communities. There are no figures of how many people are currently using the dryer,
how much they earned before the project and how much they earned after its introduction. The committee at the tent dryer were instructed to keep a record; however,
they were not consistent in this task and estimated that 35 FPs were using the dryer.
The study showed that 44% of the FPs’ profit was attributed to the usage of solar
dryers during the peak season and 31% during off-peak season. During the peak
season, the attributed proportion is higher which assumes more frequent usage of
the dryer, and the opposite is true for the off-peak season. The data corresponds with
the field observations that the dryer was empty during the week of data collection.
The FGD participants expressed that fish catches were low at the time, and thus
proportions during data collection were lower.
It is worth noting that some of the main activities of the SEED-Fish project were
not fulfilled, largely because these activities were dependent on research conducted
under the project. The disadvantage of implementing research projects that directly
affect livelihoods is the overlooking of challenges that the research process might
face during the implementation period. The emphasis on research thus overshadowed the impact of the technologies on the livelihoods of fish processors.
Diversification and Resilience
The fish processors said they also engaged in some small-scale businesses, but these
did not compare to the fish processing business in terms of income. To verify this,
respondents’ income from fish processing and that from their other sources of
income were compared. The average contribution of fish processing to the total
income of the respondents was 83%, though it ranged between 2% and 100%. In
determining income diversification, Simpson’s diversity index (Simpson 1949) was
used to measure the extent to which sources of income were diversified. The index
ranges between 0 and 1, with 0 indicating no diversification of the total number of
sources of income from one entity and 1 being the highest level of income source
diversification. Diversity was measured at 0.98 which showed that the sources of
income were highly diversified, making the FPs’ income activities sustainable for
their livelihoods.
F. W. Kayamba-Phiri et al.