Abstract

Problems militating against women development in rural areas revolve round their inability to develop themselves in their chosen economic activities. This study examined the beneficiaries’ perception of selected agricultural empowerment projects components targeted at women in rural communities of Ogun State, Nigeria. The projects were Cassava: Adding Values Africa (C:AVA), Justice, Development and Peace Movement (JDPM) Micro finance (MICRO) and National Programme for Food Security (NPFS), implemented by Justice Development and Peace Movement (JDPM) and Ogun State Agricultural Development Programme (OGADEP). Interview guides were used to elicit information from 139 randomly selected members of 16 purposively selected groups beneficiaries of selected women empowerment in the study area. The study revealed that the rural women predominantly had have high perception about the effects of the projects on their livelihood as 58.27, 72.66, 82.01, 90.65, 61.15 and 56.83% of the women perceived that the projects had improved their product packaging, access to credit facilities, knowledge and skills, business expansion, balanced emotion and increased income respectively. The data was subjected to Chi -Square analysis and the result showed that there is a significant relationship between the nature of occupation the women engaged in and the effect of the projects (x² =15.38, p<0.05), while other socio-economic characteristics were not significantly related with the projects’ effect. It was inferred from this study that participants of the OGADEP and JDPM projects had high perception of the effects of the projects on their livelihood. This study recommended that governmental and non-governmental organizations of rural orientation should focus more on empowering rural women and other rural household members in order to transform rural communities.

Key words: Beneficiaries, perception, empowerment, rural women