Impact Of Agricultural Training Programmes On Youth Agripreneurship Performance And Empowerment In Nigeria

Abstract

Within the framework of potential strategies to reduce youth unemployment in Nigeria, agriculture has been identified as one with remarkable employment opportunities which could change the economic status of young people. To this end, the Nigerian government with development partners have been implementing numerous agricultural programmes aim at empowering young people through agribusiness for several years. However, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on what worked well or what did not. This study therefore empirically assessed the impact of agricultural training programme on youth agripreneurship performance and empowerment using the case of Fadama GUYS programme in Nigeria. The study used primary data. A total of 977 respondents comprising of 455 participants and 522 non-participants were sampled across three States in Nigeria. The study adopted the Propensity Score Matching method to analyse the impact of the Programme on youth agripreneurship performance. Factors identified to significantly influence participation in the programme include; gender, years of formal education, intention to engage in agribusiness, perception of training and agribusiness. The impact estimate shows a positive and significant impact of the programme on agripreneurship performance. To analyse the impact of training on empowerment, the study adopted a three-stage estimation procedure which combined endogenous treatment effect regression model with a Tobit model. The result showed that training, through agripreneurship performance, contributed to youth empowerment. It was concluded from the study that participation in training led to better performance and empowerment. This findings suggest that stakeholders who aim to empower young people through agribusiness should come up with interventions and strategies to change youths’ perception of agribusiness and encourage them to participate in agricultural programmes. It also suggests the need to increase investment in agricultural training such as the case study