Commercialisation of Nigeria-Canada Indigenous Vegetables Project and Economic Empowerment of Women in Southwestern Nigeria

The study investigated the extent of commercialisation of the grown Nigeria-Canada indigenous vegetables among participating women in the study area as well as its impact on women's economic empowerment. These were with a view to providing information on the extent to which commercialisation of the Nigeria-Canada indigenous vegetables could improve women's economic empowerment. The study used primary data. Multistage sampling technique was used to select 300 project women for the study from three out of the four states where the project took place between 2011 and 2014 using a simple random technique. This implied that the participants were selected from 15 Local Government Areas and 30 communities were selected using a simple random sampling technique. Ten participants were selected from each community using a convenience sampling technique. An adapted instrument titled “Questionnaire on NICANVEG Project and Economic Empowerment of Women (QNEEW)” was used to collect data from the participants. Data collected were analysed using percentages, relative significant index, Pearson Product Moment correlation formular and multiple regressions. The results showed that 89.7% of the women highly participated in the NICANVEG project. The result further showed that the extent of commercialisation of the vegetables among women were 78.0%, 13.7% and 8.3% for full, semi and subsistence commercialisation respectively. Moreover, the result showed that the prominent challenges being faced by the women vegetables farmers were expensive farm equipment ( 3.57, RSI = 0.719), the untimely fund ( = 3.53 RSI = 0.711) and poor market prices of vegetables ( = 3.32, RSI = 0.666). Furthermore, the result revealed a significant positive correlation between NICANVEG project and the economic empowerment of women (r = .490, p <.05). Finally, it showed that there was a significant relationship between the extent of commercialisation and women economic empowerment in the study areas (R2 = .48.3, Adj R2 = .478, f = 94.666, p <.05). It was concluded that commercialisation of under-utilised indigenous vegetables greatly impacted the economic empowerment of the participating women in Southwestern Nigeria