Introduction

Most of the global poor live in rural areas that have been a substantial focus of development efforts over the last 70 years. While there have been significant shifts in the discourse and practice of rural development since the 1950s, Ellis and Biggs (2001) note the emergence of the concept of ‘sustainable livelihoods’ as a central motif in more recent development approaches. For Ellis and Biggs (2001, p. 445), the concept of sustainable livelihoods potentially enables a move away from the previous ‘farming first’ mentality as it “embodies no prior requirement for the poor rural individual or family to be a ‘small farmer’” (see also Scoones 2009). The importance of recognising the diversity of livelihood strategies in rural areas has been underscored by evidence of the increasing income diversification among those who farm (Barrett et al. 2001) and the importance of migration to urban centres by rural residents (Mercandalli et al. 2020). Such evidence has raised questions about whether traditional rural development approaches that primarily seek to improve agricultural production are suitable for rural populations whose non-farm activities are becoming increasingly important for their livelihoods and potentially reduce their commitment to farming (Kihoro et al. 2021; Rigg 2006). This leads to further questions about what those living in rural areas, if they are not committed to farming, might want to do. However, while a recognition of the diversity of livelihood strategies within rural development approaches may be an important step, the policy and practice of rural development still often fails to engage with what rural residents want to do, or rather what they aspire to do.

The increasing importance of non-farm activities for rural livelihoods has already led to questions over the attractiveness of technological agricultural solutions (e.g. Llewellyn and Brown 2020). A growing concern over the potential for rural smallholder farmers to ‘farm themselves out of poverty’ (Gassner et al. 2019; Harris and Orr 2014) also suggests the need to re-think the agricultural focus of many development efforts. It is in this context that we see aspirations playing a potentially significant role in the redesign of rural development efforts. In this study, we define aspirations as envisioned future livelihood strategies and their associated income components (Mausch et al. 2018). This includes a recognition that sometimes income streams may be based on necessity rather than choice and thereby aspirations are not necessarily visions of likely future states but rather “an orientation towards a desired future” (Huijsmans et al. 2020, p. 3). Arguably, supporting the aspirations of rural people, enabling them to take a step closer to doing what they want to do (be it agricultural or not), will lead to more efficient development efforts. Those who want to move out of agriculture could do so, leaving others to benefit from agricultural intervention and so produce the food required to feed the population. It is the distinct recognition that it is not purely outside forces that push people out of agriculture or force them to remain but rather agricultural and non-agricultural aspirations need to be understood as desired shifts in livelihoods (Bennike et al. 2020). We build on recent studies (Mausch et al. 2018; Verkaart et al. 2018) that began to investigate aspirations and their implications for the design of support mechanisms and explored aspirations against potential entry points for agricultural development efforts.

In contrast to recent studies that use an aspiration index (Bernard and Taffesse 2014), we aim to capture the full scope of aspirations in a way that does not restrict the expression of respondents. While the aspiration index captures ambitions, it focuses on the relative status of respondents within the community today and in the future; it does not capture the direction of any change with respect to income sources and thereby cannot support new approaches to rural development and targeting of interventions.

In this paper we explore the diversity of farm and non-farm related aspirations across a cross-section of rural Kenyan communities. We use a narrative-based approach in which respondents interpret their own aspirational stories using predefined livelihood-based assessment questions. We highlight implications and potential strategies for agricultural support mechanisms and incorporation of these into broader development efforts. Furthermore, we focus on differences between contrasting regions to explore the degree to which context informs aspirations. Finally, we discuss implications for the redesign of development approaches.

Theoretical framework

The livelihood concept (Scoones 2009) outlines how a household’s assets and political and institutional factors shape their options for taking decisions about their livelihood strategies and income structure. The concept is, therefore, well suited to the assessment of peoples’ aspirations. Rural households that farm in sub-Saharan Africa mostly operate on small land parcels which limits their potential to earn substantial incomes from agriculture (Gassner et al. 2019; Harris 2019; Harris and Orr 2014). Consequently, their livelihood portfolios have become increasingly diverse (Ellis and Freeman 2004; Haggblade et al. 2010) and it is unclear which actual and potential income streams drive household choices. In practice, livelihood strategies are often fluid and have rather ‘fuzzy’ boundaries between different income streams, yet explicit consideration of the preferred means and direction of travel towards prosperity is seldom included in surveys.

Better understanding of households’ aspirations could offer a solution. It is argued that aspirations moderate responses to incentive structures and thereby influence choices among potential options (Mausch et al. 2018; Verkaart et al. 2018). Yet, aspirations are not purely shaped by individual desires (Huijsmans et al. 2020). Social pressures, norms and expectations also play a role in their formation and expression (Bennike et al. 2020; Crossland et al. 2021). For example, in many communities ‘farming’ is not only an income generation activity but is also perceived as a lifestyle. This is despite the fact that income portfolios are increasingly dominated by sources outside farming (Borras et al. 2008; Verkaart et al. 2018). It is therefore important to capture the full scope of aspirations and not to restrict the respondents to aspirations related to any particular income stream—even when the goal is to identify potential entry points for agricultural development.Footnote 1

Figure 1 summarises the framework at the core of this study. Besides the recognition of the context within which aspirations are formed (here light grey), there are further limits and biases that need to be considered. Galiani et al. (2018) highlight that aspirations beyond achievable outcomes can lead to adverse outcomes as people become discouraged. Therefore, considering the ‘adjacent possible’Footnote 2 (here mid grey) by providing options that recognise viable aspirations should be more likely to improve development outcomes. Theoretically, the adjacent possible narrows the context (here light grey) within which aspirations are formed. In the longer term, aspirations could, however, go beyond the adjacent possible when multiple intermediate steps are envisioned towards the aspired future.

Fig. 1
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Aspirational pursuit and influences

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In addition to the contextual conditions and the adjacent possible that shape the options people can pursue, human behaviour and the resulting limitation of information processing and choice-making (World Bank 2015) shape aspiration formation and the ‘aspiration window’. The aspiration window (here dark grey) can be described as imaginable futures based on observations of peers and evolves through social interactions (Appadurai 2004; Dilley et al. 2021; Ray 2006) and through this interaction it can change or widen (Macours and Vakis 2014). The aspiration window does not necessarily align with real options as biases and imagination influence its size and shapes “what individuals perceive as desirable, possible, or even ‘thinkable’ for their lives” (World Bank 2015, p. 3). It may even be smaller than the adjacent possible based on biases in perception.

Despite a growing recognition of the importance of considering aspirations in the recent literature, there is no consensus on how to assess, measure and interpret them. Bennike et al. (2020), for example, highlight the need to analyse aspirations beyond the individualised view. They critique the implicit blaming of people’s lack of aspirations by focussing on the factors that influence or hinder aspirational pursuit. Explicit consideration of people's and communities’ aspirations provides both an entry point as well as a mechanism to evaluate outcomes of development interventions.

Methods

Research sites and sampling

We selected three research sites in rural Kenya with different levels of agricultural potential and off-farm employment opportunities—Turkana, Meru and Makueni counties (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
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Study sites and survey locations

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These three counties were purposively selected as they represent the range of diversity within the country and vary in their distance and connectivity to urban centres and in their agro-ecological potential. Turkana is a remote region of Kenya with low rainfall, limited agricultural potential and a predominantly migratory, pastoral lifestyle. Food insecurity episodes are frequent and there are few non-agricultural opportunities (Turkana County Government, n.d). Makueni is characterised by small-scale, rainfed farming with frequent crop failures due to unreliable rainfall (Makueni County Government, 2013). Livestock keeping alongside food crop production are common agricultural activities in Makueni and there is some wage employment (GOK and FAO, 2014). Meru is relatively well connected to urban centres and has better potential for both agricultural production and opportunities for wage employment (Ministry of Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries, 2016). Besides the main food crops and livestock production, cash crops such as tea or coffee are produced (GOK & IFAD, 2014). Within each county one sub-county was selected to represent the conditions outlined above. For Turkana, the sub-county included an irrigation scheme, so ensuring that farming was at least one option. In Meru, the sub-county was chosen based on its proximity to a secondary urban centre and the presence of large farms. In Makueni, the sub-counties were chosen to represent the medium distance to the capital city while being semi-arid.

During a second stage of sampling, ten villages were randomly selected within each county and from each village, ten households were randomly selected. Within each household the household head was interviewed. Additionally, we randomly selected either his/her spouse(s) or one of his/her children. This led to a total sample of 600 and, without replacement of unavailable respondents, this process led to 233 household heads, 204 spouses, 99 youths (age 16–35). Youth were underrepresented as not all households included children and several selected children were in school during the time of the interview. A sample overview by category is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Sample overview
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Survey Design

As proposed in Mausch et al. (2018) we used a mixed qualitative/quantitative survey tool called SenseMaker®, whereby respondents share a short narrative in response to an initial prompting question and then interpret their own story using a set of quantitative assessment questions (Cognitive Edge 2014; Jenal 2016; Mausch et al. 2018; Polk 2017). An advantage of this methodology is that it does not restrict the respondent to categories of interest to the researcher and allows for a more open conversation about people’s aspired future. Unlike more traditional qualitative methods, the respondent gives meaning to their narrative through ‘self-signification’, and is less prone to researcher bias. The tool has been used to explore drivers of child marriage (Bartels et al. 2018) and understand drivers of business relations (Deprez, n.d.), but the application to rural aspirations and agriculture is novel and therefore exploratory in nature.

To start our survey, respondents were asked “Imagine your life in 10 years’ time, tell a story about how you got to that point from this present day?”. This prompting question was purposefully open-ended, emotionally neutral and without reference to agriculture, to elicit an unrestricted response (Kay 2011). Additionally, we did not mention our interest in farming so as to further reduce bias and the potential for gaming.Footnote 3 Respondents were then asked to interpret or ‘signify’ the meaning of their narrative using a set of assessment questions. These self-signification questionsFootnote 4 were developed from our theoretical framework (Fig. 1) to explore the main theoretical influences on livelihood strategies and aspirations, including community values, identity, motives and goals, support mechanisms, perceived risks and opportunities, and attitudes towards farming.

The self-signification process employed three basic types of questions, answerable as triads, dyads and stones. In triads, respondents are asked to interpret their narrative based on how it is balanced between three interrelated concepts. Each triad is displayed as a triangle where each apex represents one concept. Using a digital interface, respondents are asked place a ball within the triangle in the position that best represents their narrative. The closer the ball to any one corner, the stronger their story relates to the associated concept. This position within the triad yields three numerical values in relation to each apex (i.e. a three-part ratio). The sum of these three values is therefore equal to the whole (100% or 1). For dyads, respondents are asked to rate their story along a sliding-scale between two opposing statements. Respondents can position their marker anywhere between these two labels to indicate their answer, leading to a 0–100 scale. For stones, respondents are asked to place aspects of their story along two axes (i.e. a positive cartesian plane) allowing them to simultaneously rate two characteristics at the same time. The numeric values are standard x–y coordinates that range from 0 to 100 for each category. The final section of the survey included several demographic questions to identify patterns across sub-populations such as men and women; young and old; and across different geographical locations.

Development of the survey instrument along the components outlined above followed a structured workshop approach involving several facilitated discussions between the research team, whose collective experience and expertise includes agricultural research, anthropology and the application of the SenseMaker® methodology and survey tool. The resulting survey instrument was then tested and refined with the team of enumerators recruited from the locations. The survey training and refinement was implemented with all teams jointly to ensure common understanding of the questionnaire, the approach and the concepts. Teams interviewed each other in their local languages to further refine the translation and ensure comparability within as well as across teams.Footnote 5

Data collection was conducted in September 2018 using handheld tablets and the SenseMaker® data collection app. Each respondent was surveyed individually, and their story translated and transcribed into English by the enumerator before proceeding with the self-signification and demographic questions. Data analysis involved the visualisation of quantitative responses to examine emerging patterns in respondent perspectives and across sub-groups. Triad results were visualised as density plots and geometric means calculated using the “ggtern” package (Hamilton and Ferry 2018) in the R software environment (R Core Team 2020). Dyad and stones results were visualised as violin plots generated using the “vioplots” package (Hintze and Nelson 1998) in Stata (Winter and Nichols 2008). Narratives were then explored to help contextualise and facilitate interpretation of the quantitative results. For the topical analysis, all stories were reviewed and deductively coded into various categories based on their content (e.g. farming-related, non-farming-related or both). Finally, a simple linear regression analysis was conducted in Stata to assess how the various concepts captured using the self-signification questions interact and relate to aspirations.

Aspirations: Directions, Drivers and Implications

Livelihood Strategies

The narratives shared are short summaries of respondents’ aspirational state 10 years from the interview. The most commonly mentioned topics are ‘farming’, ‘business’, ‘family’ and ‘livestock’ (Table 2), reflecting three main emerging themes from the narratives: investment in agricultural production, self-owned businesses and children’s education. The terms ‘farming’ and ‘livestock’ are the main terms relating to agriculture. ‘Business’, however, is often used about multiple sectoral foci. For instance, many stories mention business in relation to non-agricultural enterprises, such as hair salons and rental houses, while others use this term in relation to agriculture, where people aspire to ‘farming as a business’. Terms associated with children and education are mentioned in more than one third of the stories, indicating a strong focus on investment in children’s futures. Positive forward-looking terms, such as ‘achieve’, ‘better’ or ‘improve’, also appear in many of the narratives, suggesting a degree of ambition among respondents.

Table 2 Topical focus of narratives across locations (%)
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The prevalence of these themes and the types of farm and non-farm livelihood activities mentioned varies across the three locations and likely reflects differences in their local agro-ecological context and off-farm opportunities. Box 1 provides a few exemplar narratives from across the three locations. In Meru, stories tend to focus on improving mixed farming, often involving investment in commercial dairy farming. Many stories also include non-agricultural aspirations such as running shops and rental houses. In Makueni, stories focus primarily on farming and activities such as planting fruit trees, digging farm ponds, buying water tanks, and growing higher-value crops such as vegetables. Some stories, however, mention non-agricultural activities such as owning hotels, shops and transportation businesses. In Turkana, far fewer stories mention farming compared to the other locations, and those that do tend to focus on livestock production. Non-farming-related aspirations include livestock trading, running small shops, weaving baskets, making mats and brooms and selling charcoal.

Aspirations as Potential Levers for Change

The rural development debate has been discussed and theorised from various vantage points. Our approach of combining unrestricted aspiration narratives and respondents’ interpretations offered novel insights into the diversity of aspirations in rural areas and thereby potential levers for change. While highlighting the need for more integrated strategies across sectors, agricultural support especially could benefit from a more detailed consideration of aspirations in the development and delivery of innovations. Explicit understanding of aspirations and the direction of envisioned change also has implications for information gathering and processing that could improve the relevance of support mechanisms for rural populations. Advances in the methodological approach and the resulting understanding of aspirations would lend further depth to the indicative implications of our results as outlined below.

Challenging Target Group Assumptions

One key insight from the aspirational narratives is that while all households were involved in farming, only 65.8% (354) of the respondents shared farming-related narratives. These households would be the primary target group for projects attempting to support rural development through agricultural support. Within this sub-group, another 65.3% (231) aspire to continue or improve their current activity and do not aspire to start new activities. Therefore, in our sample, interventions that target optimization of current farming systems would meet a naturally receptive population of 231 out of 538. Attempting to introduce a new activity in a location to improve peoples’ livelihoods would have a naturally receptive target population of only 123 of 538 people – those that focus on agriculture and plan to start new activities. In line with Kihoro et al. (2021) for the case of Tanzanian dairy producers, this changes potential targets for dissemination efforts significantly from the current mainstream assumption that all households are farming-focussed and are therefore interested in farming innovations. It should also be recognised that aspirations are likely to vary within the household and that some members may wish to engage and invest in farming even when others look to step out (Crossland et al. 2021). Improving the understanding of aspirations within target locations and their inter- and intra-household variation would influence project design approaches as well as assessments of success.

Re-defining Success

Rural development could benefit from the consideration of aspirations by providing a grounded and localised framing of success. Predefined notions of what is achievable or desirable from an outside perspective or based on politically defined global targets are unlikely to match people’s visions and desires and thereby are likely to be met with less enthusiasm. Our results and experiences with SenseMaker® highlight the many influences and complexities of interactions that enmesh with people’s envisioned futures. This complexity means that engaging with aspirations and locally defined notions of success would require in-depth background work and robust theorization of foundations, entry points and pathways. Subsequently, theories of change are likely to become more complex and less static.

Dynamics of Aspirations

According to path dependency theory, people are more receptive to changes in their pathways when trigger events force them to re-evaluate their activities. These trigger events can be both acute (e.g. end of school) and chronic (i.e. adjustment of practice over time in response to climate change) and do not only have negative implications. These events could offer opportunities to stimulate contemplation of a broader set of options that people may have but do not normally consider. It is at these moments that farmers focus on their options. The start of a conversation about aspirations and future states could constitute a positive shock event and trigger new thoughts about strategies and trajectories. Testing this hypothesis could offer novel entry points for rural development that might overcome the inertia of the daily struggle to meet immediate needs.

Opportunities to Aspire

Farming related aspirations are associated with a greater perception of opportunities and a greater confidence in achieving goals. Widening opportunity space as well as better identification and dissemination of available opportunities could be a key leverage point for rural development initiatives and projects. Widening possibilities and highlighting options has the potential to change perceptions and inspire people to re-think their current strategies. However, efforts along these lines would have to be cognisant of recent findings which suggest that aspirations beyond the adjacent possible can lead to adverse outcomes and fatalistic behaviour (Galiani et al. 2018; Genicot and Ray 2020). Facilitating broader opportunities spanning agricultural and non-agricultural options would require coordination across a wider range of agencies to be successful. In line with Woltering et al. (2019), this points to the need to design programmes and support channels that are integrated across multiple agencies in order to offer a wide range of options across different crops, farming systems, business support services and others. Within the agricultural portfolio, this has been conceptualised as “options by context” (Sinclair and Coe 2019) which could be expanded to account for a wider range of income streams.

New Approaches to Targeting

Where immediate needs are no longer restricting the ability to pursue aspirations, what could offer promise is a change in the approaches to targeting. What we mean here is letting rural people choose their preferred support mechanisms from a much wider range of options. This implies changes to the focus of, and research on, rural development approaches. Jointly assessing agricultural and non-agricultural aspirations could generate ‘scoping’ insights prior to project design and could be integrated into existing survey tools. The integration of aspiration assessments with a more detailed household survey could prove especially insightful regarding the interactions between current context and strategy with future aspirations – accounting for those at individual, household and community level.

Refining Methods

To be more cognisant of aspirations, our work has highlighted some promising entry points for future rural development strategies and initiates. However, our work has its limitations. The various influences on the formation of aspirations that our study has highlighted suggests that any resulting rural development initiative and strategies which sought to draw on aspiration in order to allow individuals to develop a broader view of livelihood options would require more targeted and detailed research and methods. Future research would benefit from a more nuanced consideration of cultural backgrounds that may influence aspirations. For instance, our attempts to sample regions with limited opportunities might have confounded remoteness with culture e.g. in Turkana where pastoralism is widespread. However, given that our prompt question was non-specific, any biases towards livestock would have shown up in the narratives—which was not the case. Use of SenseMaker® has allowed us to explore, in a preliminary way, people’s aspirations and their drivers. Nevertheless, for a more nuanced understanding of these different levels of aspirations, more explicit prompting questions either in surveys or interviews could be useful in eliciting descriptions of the current state, the aspirations themselves, the pathway towards them as well as the reasons for them.

Conclusions

We argue that understanding the degree to which farming features in the aspirations of rural households has the potential to help explain (non)adoption of agricultural technologies. Both farming and off-farm opportunities could be actively showcased and brought into community narratives to allow people to broaden their aspiration window. What our work suggests is that—before we arrive on the scene—everyone's options are mediated by their context. The narrative we have developed here is that people are born into livelihood systems where agriculture plays an important role. One may not be 100% a farmer, but it is unlikely that one lives a life untouched by agriculture (e.g. LaRue et al. 2021; Verkaart et al. 2018). Agriculture is probably the default option or the fallback position in many instances. Where and how people grow up shapes the default opportunity space, defines options and thus affects aspirations. Any narratives around future aspirations are grounded in current realities and tend to represent a negotiated ground between individual, household and community drivers (Bennike et al. 2020). In contexts where agriculture is (perceived to be) both viable and profitable it is more likely to remain the majority aspiration. In situations where this is not the case, aspirations play out in more complicated ways and the pull of non-agricultural options is counteracted by limited capital and a sense of being forced into agriculture. It is not yet clear if the indicated shift towards agriculture for older people reflects a shift in an individual’s aspiration as they age and as their opportunity space evolves (e.g. inherit land) or narrows (e.g. restricted by previous life events or being “trapped” in agriculture); or whether young people who aspire to move out of farming migrate, and are therefore not captured in our sample, while those who aspire to farm, stay and are surveyed.

The main conclusion is that aspirations are a highly complex concept. They differ widely across locations and people, they are framed and shaped by context, their pursuit depends on current status and resources. Better knowledge of aspirations does offer entry points for better rural development but their influence on people’s choices will have to be investigated in more detail. The mixed method approach and SenseMaker® as a tool offers novel insights but likely needs to be complemented with more detailed quantitative data to make insights more rigorous and actionable. At the more strategic and practical level, agricultural and non-agricultural strategies and entry point considerations need to be jointly assessed and analysed in the context of, and based on, a strong voice of rural people who are ultimately affected and expected to benefit from any interventions.