Publication: Gender Dimensions in Nigerian Agriculture
Loading...
Published
2013-10
ISSN
Date
2016-11-28
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
With a fast growing population requiring an ever growing supply of food, a national poverty rate of 63 percent, and a labor force that is dominated by agricultural work, Nigeria's efforts to boost agricultural productivity could not be better timed. Though women constitute a large share of the agricultural labor force in Nigeria, little is known about their activities, roles, and constraints in the sector. By thoroughly assessing their agricultural activities, it will help to determine not only what women are doing in the sector, but how best to reduce their constraints and increase productivity. This policy brief, the first in a series of two, investigates the role of women in Nigerian agriculture using the first dataset to capture a comprehensive picture of agriculture across the nation of Nigeria. It finds that women are heavily involved in the production of both, staple (food) crops and cash crops, the agricultural value chain, and livestock production. However, women earn and produce much less than men, and have limited access to land, inputs, labor, and extension services.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Oseni, Gbemisola; Goldstein, Markus; Utah, Amarachi. 2013. Gender Dimensions in Nigerian Agriculture. Africa Region Gender Practice Policy Brief;No. 6. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25459 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Can Agricultural Households Farm Their Way Out of Poverty?(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-11)This paper examines the determinants of agricultural productivity and its link to poverty using nationally representative data from the Nigeria General Household Survey Panel, 2010/11. The findings indicate an elasticity of poverty reduction with respect to agricultural productivity of between 0.25 to 0.3 percent, implying that a 10 percent increase in agricultural productivity will decrease the likelihood of being poor by between 2.5 and 3 percent. To increase agricultural productivity, land, labor, fertilizer, agricultural advice, and diversification within agriculture are the most important factors. As commonly found in the literature, the results indicate the inverse-land size productivity relationship. More specifically, a 10 percent increase in harvested land size will decrease productivity by 6.6 percent, all else being equal. In a simulation exercise where land quality is assumed to be constant across small and large holdings, the results show that if farms in the top land quintile had half the median yield per hectare of farms in the lowest quintile, production of the top quintile would be 10 times higher. The higher overall values of harvests from larger land sizes are more likely because of cultivation of larger expanses of land, rather than from efficient production. It should be noted that having larger land sizes in itself is not positively correlated with a lower likelihood of being poor. This is not to say that having larger land sizes is not important for farming, but rather it indicates that increasing efficiency is the more important need that could lead to poverty reduction for agricultural households.Publication Understanding the Agricultural Input Landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa : Recent Plot, Household, and Community-Level Evidence(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-08)Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet following several years of high food prices, concerted policy efforts to intensify fertilizer and hybrid seed use, and increased public and private investment in agriculture, how low is modern input use in Africa really? This paper revisits Africa's agricultural input landscape, exploiting the unique, recently collected, nationally representative, agriculturally intensive, and cross-country comparable Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture covering six countries in the region (Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda). The study uses data from more than 22,000 households and 62,000 plots to investigate a range of commonly held conceptions about modern input use in Africa, distilling the most striking and important findings into 10 key takeaway descriptive results.Publication Burkina Faso : What is Driving Cotton Production, Stochastic Frontier Approach for Panel Data(Washington, DC, 2013-06-12)Burkina Faso's Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) of the 2000s, which were implemented as annually rolled-over Priority Action Programs, focused on four pillars: a) accelerating broad based growth; b) expanding access to social services for the poor; c) increasing employment and income-generating activities for the poor; and d) promoting good governance. Increased public expenditure and targeted social service provision also led to improved access to basic services. In the area of education, progress has been made in terms of school infrastructure. Over the period of 2003-2008, substantial expansion (around 40 percent) of both the number of schools and the number of classrooms was achieved. Controlling and treating epidemic diseases also had good results, thanks to prevention and public awareness efforts and improved hygiene. Meanwhile, the country has been through several exogenous shocks and crises likely to have affected the pattern of poverty outcomes. In the past two decades, Burkina Faso's income per capita growth has been positive and less volatile relative to the past. Recent growth trends appear to be anchored by a general recovery in the primary sector. Household consumption was just as volatile as income per capita in the 1980s, but recovered substantially after the country gained competitiveness in the latter half of the 1990s following devaluation. However, since then, consumption has exhibited much more volatility than output. Finally, most the social indicators show an improvement in Burkina Faso since the early 1980s. Burkina Faso has kept pace with the overall positive trends observed in Sub-Saharan Africa and low income countries.Publication Cameroon - Agricultural Value Chain : Competitiveness Study(Washington, DC, 2008-06)This study, competitiveness of the value chain of the agricultural sector in Cameroon, aims to help the Government achieve its objectives for the rural sector. The main objective of this study was to provide information on the potentials, investment and growth policies of commercial agriculture in Cameroon. It gives an overview of the constraints and analyzes the national, regional or international competitiveness of six value chains of the agricultural sector. This paper examines family and large agro-industrial farms from different regions of Cameroon. The six aspects studied are: cassava, cotton, maize, palm oil, plantain and poultry. The primary purpose of this study of competitiveness is to identify products and operating systems already competitive or having the ability to become competitive on the domestic, regional or global market. The Government has explicitly asked the Bank to support new projects of its agricultural program. This economic and sectoral work will serve as a basis for a new loan to the agricultural sector of Cameroon.Publication Quantifying Spillover Effects from Large Farm Establishments(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-10)Almost a decade after large land-based investment for agriculture increased sharply, opinions on its impact continue to diverge, partly because (positive or negative) spillovers on neighboring smallholders have never been rigorously assessed. Applying methods from the urban literature on Mozambican data suggests that changes in the number and area of large farms within 25 or 50 kilometers of these investments raised use of improved practices, animal traction, and inputs by small farmers without increasing cultivated area or participation in output, credit, and nonfarm labor markets; or, once these factors are controlled for, yields. The limited scope and modest size of the estimated benefits point toward considerable unrealized potential. The paper discusses ways to systematically explore the size of such potential and the extent to which it is realized.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2005(World Bank, 2004)Firms and entrepreneurs of all types from microenterprises to multinationals play a central role in growth and poverty reduction. Their investment decisions drive job creation, the availability and affordability of goods and services for consumers, and the tax revenues governments can draw on to fund health, education, and other services. Their contribution depends largely on the way governments shape the investment climate in each location through the protection of property rights, regulation and taxation, strategies for providing infrastructure, interventions in finance and labor markets, and broader governance features such as corruption. The World Development Report 2005 argues that improving the investment climates of their societies should be a top priority for governments. Drawing on surveys of nearly 30,000 firms in 53 developing countries, country case studies, and other new research, the Report explores questions such as: What are the key features of a good investment climate, and how do they influence growth and poverty? What can governments do to improve their investment climates, and how can they go about tackling such a broad agenda? What has been learned about good practice in each of the main areas of the investment climate? What role might selective interventions and international arrangements play in improving the investment climate? What can the international community do to help developing countries improve the investment climates of their societies? In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Bank's new program of Investment Climate Surveys, the Bank's Doing Business Project, and World Development Indicators 2004‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Caring about Carework(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-07-09)Women farmers in the Western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) bear the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work. Women spend less time than men on their plots and more time on domestic work. The authors use a combination of consultations in the field, desk research, and primary data collection to understand the patterns of time allocation in rural households in Western DRC. The gender differences in time allocation are striking where the female plot managers do 1 hour and 52 minutes more of domestic work per day than male plot managers. The gender differences are higher in male-headed households, and female plot managers spend significantly more time taking care of children when farming or going to market than their male counterparts. The agricultural productivity of female plot managers is on average twenty six percent lower than that of male plot managers. Having young children is associated with lower productivity for women but not for men. With the support of various stakeholders, the authors will pilot the provision of childcare services in the targeted region. The authors will rigorously evaluate the importance of these services on women’s time allocation to productive activities, as well as their productivity.Publication Comparative Analysis of Tomato Value Chain Competitiveness in Selected Areas of Malawi and Mozambique(Taylor and Francis, 2015-09-25)This paper discusses tomato value chain performance in Malawi and Mozambique using data collected from a market study commissioned by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture as part of a regional research on conservation agriculture in maize-based farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results show that Malawi has a slightly higher competitive advantage in the production of tomato compared to Mozambique. Malawi’s relative competitiveness in tomato is mainly due to slightly higher productivity and the cost advantage in labor (low wages) and irrigation costs. The paper proposes policy implications aimed at raising the productivity and trade competitiveness of tomato, as this will ensure the overall productivity of the maize-based smallholder farming systems in the two countries.Publication Engaging Citizens for Better Development Results(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-05-15)In recent years, the world has seen formidable manifestations of citizens’ engagement. By taking to the streets to condemn corruption scandals, by rallying on social media to address growing inequalities, or by participating in global consultations to develop the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ordinary citizens are increasingly eager and able to make their voices heard. At the same time, after several decades of progress, the space for citizens’ voices is shrinking globally as several governments raise legal barriers to constrain actions by civil society organizations (CSOs) and to muzzle the media. In this context, the World Bank Group’s commitment to citizen engagement can catalyze change. This is even more important because achieving the SDGs and the twin goals rests on the active involvement of citizens and local governments.