A THESISS SUBMITTED TO DEPARTMENT OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION OF GRADUATE STUDIES OF ARBA MINCH UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Energy is a main component of people’s socioeconomic development worldwide. Nevertheless, people across the world are facing suffer from poverty of energy, having a few or no access to energy for lighting, cooking, heating and communication technologies. Sub Saharan African (SSA) countries are among the regions having the low access to electricity. The rural societies in Ethiopia continue to rely on biomass for energy source, which has a negative impact on their socioeconomic development and rural household’s livelihood. As a result, this study identifies rural household behaviors toward adopting modern alternative energy sources in Boreda district, southern Ethiopia. In this study a total of 280 rural households were surveyed, and the data were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods such as to identify, determinants of adoption of AET Statistics Descriptive Inferential (probit model) Qualitative techniques Narratives Verbal descriptions of analysis. To analysis, contributions of alternative energy technology adoption. Descriptive - Statistical Products and Service Solutions (SPSS) Ver,20, Stata version 8 and presentation Qualitative techniques - Narrations Annotations Verbal descriptions. To explore, challenges facing the adoption of AET. Descriptive statistics Annotations (explanations) Narrations Verbal description. The probit model was used to analyze the quantitative data in addition to the descriptive statistics. The probit model results indicated that, awareness, getting credit and farm size have positive contributions on the adoptions of alternative energy technology, whereas age of household head and livestock size have negative contribution. The economic, social, and environmental contributions of the alternative energy technology were identified during the study. Among economic contributions are saving time, saving money, reducing work load, protect diseases, enable women to engage in income generating activities and using bio salary replacing to chemical fertilizer. Social contributions contain children been enrolled in the school, enable women to have more time for agricultural and other work, Reduce the need to get up earlier in the morning for cooking. Environmental contributions are reducing deforestation, reducing of disease infection, reducing environmental pollution, reducing indoor pollution and increase indoor sanitation. The Challenges of the adoption of alternative energy technology in study area were lack of awareness, shortage of income and lack of true technology sources which resulted from poor quality and short lifespan, illegal suppliers and retailers and lack of maintenances. Development agents should encourage farmers to use technology by creating access to technical training opportunities and continuous follow-up. Both governmental and non-governmental should design to sustain efficient modern technology production and transition to use of clean modern energy. Development planers should plan and implement at a grass root level until the expansion of alternative energy technology in the study area. The kebele development agents need to move house to house to create awareness about alternative energy technology benefits. Create legal energy technology disseminations /merchants/ and control illegals merchants. In the study areas, illegal distributers were obstacles to adopt alternative energy technology especially solar technology, improved stove and biogas technology are inefficient in quality and lack of skill for maintenance. Therefore, the concerned bodies such as the Water Irrigation and Mining Office should responsibly take part in enhancing the technology.