Socioeconomic factors influencing rural women accessibility to empowerment programs in Kogi state, Nigeria

Abstract

The goal of empowerment programs is to promote initiatives aimed at uplifting society's impoverished and disenfranchised citizens, who are typically women and youth. This paper, therefore, examined the socioeconomic features influencing rural women accessibility to empowerment programs in Kogi state, Nigeria. The research is specifically looking at socioeconomic characteristics of respondents, ascertaining the level of effectiveness of empowerment programs on agricultural activities, describe the level of accessibility to empowerment programs and identifying the constraints of empowerment programs. Random and snow ball sampling methods have been combined to gather information from 125 respondents. Descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression were used to analyze data. Average farm size was 2.82 ha, with annual income of 466,000 NGN. Empowerment programs such as Kogi APPEAL and Farmer moni were mostly accessible among women farmers. Marital status, household size, education were significant factors in accessing empowerment programs among women in Kogi state. Therefore, it is recommended that policies and programs that address women farmers' access to empowerment programs assets should be more inclusive.

Keywords

• women
• empowerment
• rural women
• effects
• programs