Entrepreneurship Skill for Empowering Women in Cocoyam Production in Abia and Imo States, Nigeria

The study adopted survey design to determine the entrepreneurial skills for empowering women in cocoyam production in Abia and Imo States of Nigeria. Objectives of the study were to determine the entrepreneurship skills available that are utilized for empowering women in cocoyam production and determine the extension strategies for empowering women in cocoyam production. The hypothesis of the study states that there is no significant mean difference between the available entrepreneurship skills and strategies utilized for empowering women in cocoyam production. Questionnaire was the instrument for data collection constructed on a 4-point measuring scale which has ( as the cut of point. Instrument was validated by peer review of two experts in agricultural extension and statistics. The reliability was achieved by subjecting the data collected from pre-survey to Cronbach’s Alpha which yield a reliability co-efficient rα = 0.83 which affirmed high reliability index. Multi-stage simple probability and disproportionate sampling technique was used to select sample size of 250. In Abia, 100 women cocoyam farmers were sampled while 150 were sampled from Imo State. The instrument was administered and retrieved by the help of research assistants such as extension agents and executives of women development union in the sampled areas. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency, mean and inferential statistics as t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that entrepreneurship skills were available in empowering women with the pooled mean scores of ( for Abia and ( for Imo State. The Imo women were better than Abia cocoyam farmers. It was also indicated that strategies for empowering women cocoyam farmers were used more in Imo State with 2 than Abia State 1 . The hypothesis of no significant mean difference was not rejected because t = -0.003 at P ≥ 0.05 indicated no mean difference between the strategies utilized in Abia and Imo State for empowering women on entrepreneurship skills in cocoyam production. It was concluded that women cocoyam farmers were less empowered and had less access to land, fund and extension services in both Imo and Abia State. But the Imo cocoyam farmers were marginally better than their Abia women cocoyam farmers counterpart on the strategies used on empowering women on entrepreneurship skills in cocoyam production. It was concluded that cocoyam farmers were less empowered on entrepreneurship skills, hence, they had less access to land, fund and extension services. The study recommended that more women should be employed into the WIA arm of the ADP to enable them sufficiently empower women to get access to entrepreneurship skills such as agronomic and business skills to enhance cocoyam production.