The Afar survives for centuries through practicing their traditional production system andrnway of life that is friendly to the Socio-economic and ecology of the area they inhabit.rnHowever, during the imperial period the Afar pastoralist have faced a challenge afterrntheir communal grazing lands are incorporated by large commercial and state farms. Thisrnprocess leads them to impoverishment, resource scarcity, vulnerability to drought andrnland degradation. This and other reasons forced the pastoralists in the study area tornengage in djfferent non-pastoral economic activities to realize their desired livelihoodrnoutcomes. The purpose of this study was therefore, to understand traditional andrnalternative livelihood strategies undertaken by the pastoral households, the determinantrnfactors that influence livelihood diversification, and the constraints that pastoralists facedrnin djversifying their livelihood. Multi-stage stratified random sampling procedure wasrnfollowed to select three peasant associations (one from pastoral and two from agropastoralrnPA), and each peasant associations were stratified in to three wealth stratum.rnThen 100 households were proportionally selected among each stratum. Both qualitativernand quantitative methods were used to collect essential data. Questionnaire were used torncollect quantitative data, whereas, FGD& key informant interviews were undertaken torncollect qualitative data. Secondary data were also used in the study. Both descriptive andrneconometric model were used to analyze the data. The descriptive statistics used includesrnX2 -test & independent t-test, one-way ANOV A, frequency, percentage, mean, andrnstandard deviation; and the econometric model used was logistic regression. The resultrnshows that the better-off wealth group was less diversified as compared to other wealthrngroups. Only 41.2% of them were diversified and 48.8% of them was still depends onlyrnon livestock production. While, 90.6% of the poor households were diversified andrnmostly involved in wage labor in the nearby large commercial farms. The logit modelrnresult shows that, Age of household head, livestock size, distance from the nearest townrnand dependency ratio have a significant and negative influence of livelihoodrndiversification, whereas, family size, farm size, average education of the household andrnsex of the household head have a significant and positive influence on diversification.rnHowever, livestock size does not have statistically significant influence on livelihoodrndiversification. Moreover, the pastoralists in the study area constrained by differentrnfactors in pursuing alternative livelihood such as, lack of initial capital, lack ofrnagricultural input, the expansion of P.julifora in most farm and grazing lands, etc.rnConsidering diversification of livelihood as an important means to ensure food security,rnthe government should increase its effort on human capital development. Agriculturalrninput and credit service should also provided by the concerned bodies.