Abstract:
The twenty-first century is regarded as a century of urbanization since both the trends and
rate of urbanization is very high all over the world. Bahir Dar is one of the rapidly
growing Ethiopian cities characterized by the rise of horizontal urban expansion. As a
result, large numbers of local landholders who are mainly engaged in agricultural
activity for their livelihood have been forced to lose their land rights. However, the
situation of displaced farmers and its impact on the life making of the ex-farmers around
regional towns and cities has received less attention. Thus, the intention of this research
was to explore the influences of Horizontal Urban Expansion and the Problem of Ex Farmers’ Coping to New Livelihood in Bahir Dar city, Ethiopia. The research is mainly
descriptive in its design upon which both primary and secondary data sources were used.
While conducting the research both quantitative and qualitative research approaches
were applied. The study also used 309 respondents as sample participants. The result of
the study indicates that the displaced farming communities are affected socially,
economically and naturally by urban expansion. Socially the displaced farmers lost their
social relationship and values like idir, iqub and sunbet mahiber in the new area after
displacement and economically, displaced farmers’loss their livestock as a result of the
decreased size of farming and grazing lands. Due to this fact, displaced farmers were
obliged to sell their livestock assets to minimize and adjust according to the proportion of
remaining farmlands. The researcher recommends that the concerned body in the study
area should be developed vertical expansion instead of horizontal, to reduce the number
of displaced farmers, the city administration must be put enough financial plan before
undertaking the land from the farmers and the concerned body should be give training to
the displaced farmers to adopt the new way of life