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Nigerian Women Agro-entrepreneurship Enhancement: Issues and Challenges

Introduction

            Suleiman (2006) defined entrepreneurship as “the enthusiasm and cleverness of an individual to seek for investment opportunities to establish and run an enterprise successfully” even as Drucker viewed an manufacturer as a self who perceives affair opportunities and takes benefit of the scarce assets and uses them profitably. Entrepreneurs are job creators and/or be converted into self-employed rather than seekers of jobs in an overstretched broadcast benefit. By USA ordinary, a woman-owned enterprise is a small enterprise that is at least 51% owned, managed and operated by one or more women.

            A small-scale emergent is a farm land customary on a land area of not less than 5 hectares. In Nigeria, most of the small-scale emergent enterprises are owned by men. This does not entail that Nigerian women agriculturists are not desirous of expanding their businesses due to so many challenges which border on gender issues, fiscal or socio-cultural barriers as well as government unfavourable policies. This document, a purely descriptive research, employs lesser data to expound on the issues and challenges confronting the enhancement of the Nigerian women to full blown agro- entrepreneurs for inhabitant fiscal advancement. The rest of the conversation in this document is methodical by the side of the subsequent issues;

·        Women’s potentials in capitalist skills.

·        Why women entrepreneurship enhancement?

·        Policy Framework for Women Entrepreneurship Enhancement.

·        Challenges faced by women agro-entrepreneurs.

·        Strategies for enhancement of women agro-entrepreneurs.

·        End.

Women’s Potentials in Capitalist Skills                                             

Women in general are naturally endowed with some exceptional abilities, which if by the book harnessed for entrepreneurship function, may maybe result in clear and enviable results. Women by scenery;

v     Have creative abilities

v     Are blessed with cleverness to persist and pursue their desires

v     Are excellent and patient nurtures of family, and this tenacity is usually transferred into affair

v     Are excellent innovators

v     Have cleverness to develop passion for what they believe in

Waton (undated) cited in Okara (2005) identified the basic requirements of an manufacturer to contain: hardwork, teamwork, commitment, appreciation, listening, high expectations, setting achievable goals. Women, by scenery and exposure to family relationships, possess most of these qualities that are essential and can be enhanced for capitalist success.

Why Women Entrepreneurship Enhancement?

          Many researchers have shown that poverty is a ill that incapacitates its victim economically and indirectly theme him/her to a state of insolvency, voicelessness, powerlessness and even violence (Planet Bank 2000; Okojie, 2002) Unfortunately, the most unnatural sex by the higher than incapacitation are women and family. Data show that women are poorer than men. The UNDP (1995) estimated that, about 60% of the planet-poors, are women. Women are poorer because they are more vulnerable economically.

           The findings of Thane (1978), Showalter (1987) and Lewis and Piachered (1987) cited in Magaji (2004) showed that women have been the poor sex throughout the 20th Century and have twisted a significant majority of the poor since poverty was at the initiation recognized. On why women are the poorest sex, the corporal strength of women and innumerable challenges regulate them to specific soft duties making it tiresome to be enterprising. Entrepreneurship enhancement therefore is a crucial tool for women’s fiscal empowerment.

            The benefits derivable from empowering the women folk are far reaching, early with family advancement and eventually sad on the inhabitant and global fiscal advancement. According to the Nigerian Minister of Women Affairs and Shared Enhancement, Hajiya H. S. Bungudu, the newest Nigerian census exposed that women constitute 49.9% of the state’s populace; the underrepresentation of women (2%) in the state’s enhancement processes in finance, affair and investment fronts renders 40% of the populace inadequately positioned to say to the fiscal progression of the country. It is the state that blends the strengths of women and men that will lead the planet in enhancement (Kiyosaki 1993) in the meadow of emergent and additional sectors.

Entrepreneurship or investing is not an only one of its kind set aside of any gender. Both women and men breed the same result provided they stay on the doctrine of investment. Kiyosaki (1993) proves with arithmetic data in United States, that women are better investors than men. A year 2000 Inhabitant Friendship of Investors Corporation (NAIC) study establish that women-only clubs achieved mean annual income of 32% since 1951 versus 23% for men-only investment clubs. The verdict is; women know how to soubriquet money and can be stuck-up entrepreneurs than men if the innumerable obstacles to enhancement is removed or minimized.

Policy Framework for Women Entrepreneurship Enhancement

There are neither policies nor strategies for entrepreneurship enhancement that is specifically tailored to women (Olutunla, 2008). The Nigerian government’s policy of promoting entrepreneurship out-of-date back to the early 1970s. The hope of promoting small scale enterprises to stimulate entrepreneurship was documented in the 2nd Inhabitant Enhancement Plot (1970-74). This policy continued in the 3rd (1975-80) and the 4th Inhabitant Enhancement Plot owing to innumerable strategies of technical, financial and management of the small scale industries. The Centralized Government’s interest for the menacing problem of mass unemployment in the mid-1980s spurred the setting up of the Inhabitant Directorate of Employment (NDE) in 1986 and the Work For Physically Programme (WFYP) in 1987. Both were essentially establishment programmes of schooling and financial help to entrepreneurs. The NDE operations included three core programmes (i) Youth Employment and Vocational Skills Enhancement Curriculum (YEVSDP) (ii) agricultural programs (iii) the small scale industries and graduate employment machinate. The NDE, though starved of fund for some time, has achieved a lot in promoting employment, make wealth and alleviating women poverty. The Better Life for Rural Women Programme (BLRWP) initiative of a at the initiation lady of the Centralized Republic of Nigeria, Maryam Babangida, was an entrepreneurship enhancement programme specifically for promoting culture, affect and fiscal enhancement of women. It made unique contribution to women owing to the supportive organizations. The moral fiber of BLRWP is still operating today owing to the subsequent at the initiation ladies. A number of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) also came up to promote entrepreneurship enhancement. Prominent among them was the Country Women Friendship of Nigeria (COWAN) which contributed immensely towards women entrepreneurship enhancement owing to establishment of many cooperatives and micro-confidence schemes and in link with the United Nations.             

The Role of Women in Emergent

A significant amount of work has been carried out in developing countries on the potential of women in boosting food production. Boserup (1970) described Black Africa as the province of female emergent par distinction. FAO (1982) estimated that the rural women say two-third of all the time that is place into habitual emergent in Africa. Accat (1983) also pointed out that 80% of African women are engaged in emergent. Patel and Antonio (1973) reported that 95% of the Yoruba women of the Southwestern Nigeria are engaged in farm facility, on the rise yams, maize, tobacco and cassava, poultry and fish emergent. They also participate in bush clearing, land preparation and weeding. In addendum to their role in production, they are actively engaged in harvesting, processing and marketing of farm yield. The participation of Igbo men in nonfarm actions and waged employment has resulted in an increased workload for women in food crop production as well as a breakdown of the gender division of labor in emergent. Igbo women now undertake some of the conventional male agricultural responsibilities in addendum to those in the female domain (Ezumah and Di Domenico, 1995). The predominance of women in the small-scale fisheries post-restore actions: micro-fish retailing, fish processing, fish delivery and marketing, make women the foremost players in the socio-fiscal enhancement of the West African countries.

Even with women’s wide and different participation in emergent, they continue to have less access to confidence and modern emergent inputs. Therefore, their farm facility is labor-intensive, yields paltry fiscal income (Buvinie and Mehra, 1990) and run mostly at survival level. International Labour Establishment (ILO 2003) quoted in Akpera and Sunday (2008) reported that Nigerian and African women entrepreneurs in general are in the micro enterprise sector and very nearly hidden in the small and medium enterprise categories.

The Challenges of Nigerian Women Agro-Entrepreneurs

            Some of the many obstacles that hinder women enterprise enhancement, agribusiness progression and improved income restore contain;

1)    Finance

The greatest challenge for Nigerian women in agribusiness is lack of finance. Women in agribusiness need significant finance both for initiation-up and additional room. Finance may maybe be in form of justice or from external sources. Justice from informal sources includes personal savings, friends and relatives, habitual (esusu), certified and age-assemble associations as well as proper co-machinist societies.

External finance is majorly from banks (particular, enhancement, money-making, etc), government agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), international donors, etc. Entrepreneurs are probable to grant, in some cases, 25% of fund applied for and/or yield collaterals before accessing these external finances. It has been tiresome for women to bring to somebody’s attention justice for own affair because most women attracted or engaged in emergent earn low income. Many of the money-making or enhancement banks are loath to accord agricultural loans due commonly to the high agricultural risk business or because they do not have competent assessors as in the case of fish emergent. The high interest rate exciting as well as the demand for collateral of landed material goods or additional assets also compound the come forth.

            Now, the Microfinance banks (MFB) are the government’s newest foremost organ of policy for entrepreneurship finance in Nigeria. In an ongoing research conducted recently, it was learned that male to female application and praise by MFB are in the ratio 65% to 35%. This discrepancy was associated to women entrepreneurs approaching banks on an individual footing and lack of like a log written affair plot and/or feasibility studies (Olutunla, 2008).

2)       Manpower and Culture

The total affair be- it agricultural or any additional, revolves around the manufacturer (thinker) as she combines all additional human, financial and material assets to make an enterprise of value. The chief executive of the affair furnish must be knowledgeable to successfully redo assets to benefit. Agribusiness at small or medium scale is greatly certified, mechanically driven and demand some level of culture. Culture not only provides basic information and skills to improve affect and Iivelihood, but it empowers women to take their rightful house in society and the enhancement administer (Fasokun 2000).

      Capitalist culture seems to be the foremost key policy to promote entrepreneurship enhancement for women in Nigeria. Entrepreneurship culture should be inculcated into school curriculum at all levels. Research indicates that Small and Medium endeavor Manufacturing Empowerment Machinate (SMEIES) operators ranked the reasons for obstruction of entrepreneurs’ application for loans and came up with reasons that array from terrible feasibility studies, poor management skills, lack of proper accounting, poor reputation checks and attitudes among others. All these are challenges that can be remedied by entrepreneurship culture. Even as the 93 approved Nigerian universities have adopted capitalist studies, assets and the dearth of teachers to train the students has remained an hindrance.

A number of contemporary schooling centers/programs are urban-based, for example, the Manufacturing Enhancement Centers customary in the 1960s are urban-based. Small Medium Capitalist Enhancement Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) meant at facilitating confidence, technology markets, room construction, schooling and technical help for SMEs and grant travelable linkage with women bodies is urban-based and starved of assets. Agribusiness is rural-based and better educated farmers are more liable to adopt new technologies and have access to confidence and additional room air force (Adereti, 2000).

3)          Technology

Many women, due to lack of exposure and financial limitations, still make use of ancient technology in emergent, processing and maintenance thus chief to hard work and low productivity.

4)    Cultural Restrictions/Weak Land Rights:

The Nigerian polish cannot be described as life gender forthcoming. For example, the “Kule” policy in the North everywhere married women are forbidden from vacant out of the house in daylight for affair is an initiative/enhancement-killer policy that should be dejected in this 21st Century. In Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, everywhere women have fill in dependability for food production, they are commonly restricted to user rights to land and theme to the consent of a male relative (FAO, 1982). Polish and shared practices discriminate hostile to women to be enterprise successors/inheritors or own independent assets which may maybe easily serve as collaterals. Such inequitable land rights are reflected in the smaller land sizes of women farmers thus restrictive them economically.

5)       Lack of Gear and Apt Technology

Even with women’s wide and different participation in emergent, they continue to have less access to modern emergent inputs. Therefore, women agro-entrepreneurs work below very tiresome and laborious situation, by crude habitual technology. Technology is studiously correlated to finance and culture. Nigerian women entrepreneurs, primarily in emergent, work below very tiresome and laborious situation, by crude habitual technology. There is urgent need for provision of modern, cost effectual and affordable technologies for the use of women.  

Moreover, some new technology has evenly been inappropriate to women’s wants. There is a need to define some priority events to promote the role of women in the state because it has been showed that women are productive and efficient when they have access to the aptly technologies and opportunities.

6)       Erroneous Thoughts about Women and Confidence

There are certain myths about women in accept to confidence which have made them to wait poor and restricted their capitalist prospects. One of such myths is that poor women make poor confidence risks. This is life proved ill-treat as Olutunla (2008) reported that Nigerian women have been establish to be more faithful in terms of loan refund to Banks than men.

7)                Capitalist Attitude

According to Akpa (2007), an mean manufacturer is rugged and aggressive. These are ordinary attributes of men even as most women are of the gentle and kind disposition. Men tend to focus on gettingthe job done even as women tend to focus on life more inclusive and relational. If a woman manufacturer is to make it, she must adopt some level of ruggedness and violence. Success is not gender-forthcoming.

8)                   Research and Additional room Air force

For a long time, agronomic researchers do not pay attention to the role of women in the emergent logic. Research into the actions of women in emergent is quick attention only recently. A assessment in Ogun State, Nigeria (Elabor-Idemudia, 1991) and Osun State, Nigeria (Ogbimi and Williams, 1999) exposed that Additional room Agents visited between 7-10% of women farmers each week compared to 70% of the male farmers who received weekly visits. An FAO (1989) study establish government investment on emergent represented less than half the sector’s contribution to inhabitant income, therefore, it is evenhanded to estimate that women’s access to additional room air force and schooling primarily in the area of fish emergent, processing, packaging, delivery and marketing are dodgy to improve when the by and large funding and availability of air force is declining.

9)          Misplaced Focus

Many agricultural projects and programs are not apposite to the only one of its kind circumstances of women or may not reach women at all, thus truncating the intended try to boost food production.

10)      Market and Marketing

Due to lack of excellent roads in Nigeria, electricity, poor access to in rank and poor networking, many farm yield pass away thus hopeless women farmers.

Strategies for Women Agro-Entrepreneurship Enhancement

·                    The complementary policy issues in entrepreneurship culture should contain rising women enrolment in schools at all levels primarily in the meadow of emergent to lower gender inequality. Budgetary allocation should be made to accommodate more long-lasting and vocational culture.

·                    More seminars/workshops should be sponsored and extended to rural areas to boost women’s room to initiation and grow their agribusiness, arrange sound affair plot/feasibility studies and boost their technical and administrative room in agribusiness.

·        Modern processing plants/storage conveniences should be installed for women groups on government/confidential establishment link footing so that women can administer and pile their farm yield with ease.

·        The enabling background in terms of gender-forthcoming policies, excellent roads, pipe-borne fill up and electricity should be provided by the innumerable arms of government.

·        Cooperatives and women groups should be more formally instituted and encouraged among women to position them strategically to access fund and additional inputs with ease.

·        The Government should mandate the money-making Banks to yield more gender-forthcoming loan post (low interest rates and more relaxed duration of refund).

·        Women should be exposed to the newest agro-technology from time to time to take out hard work in emergent, processing and maintenance techniques.

·        Nigerian women should be encouraged to arrangement more, both at the inhabitant and international levels for more exposure, to access fund and export in rank.

·        Agro-additional room institutions should be boosted and more women additional room agents be qualified to lower women to additional room workers ratio and for wider coverage of women agriculturists.

End

            Nigeria’s vision of becoming one of the top twenty chief economies of the planet by the year 2020, if not known austerely as vision 20:20 appears compelling enough to energize its over 150 million broadcast (nearly half of which are women) to make the vision a reality. To accomplish this laudable goal, there is urgent need to pay attention to the enhancement of agro-women entrepreneurs so that they can take their house in family advancement and inhabitant fiscal enhancement. The government and enhancement/exchange agencies must not only be prepared to recognize the fiscal role of the women but must also extend to them the same recollection and conveniences as the men are enjoying.

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