ABSTRACTThe study assessed the impact of Women-in-Agriculture (WIA) groundnut processingprogrammeon poverty alleviationin Kano State, Nigeria. Two groups (each consisting of 25 members) of women groundnut processors that benefitted from WIA programme were purposively selected from the three zones of the State. This gave a sample size of 150 women across the State. For non-beneficiaries, equal number of sample size were randomly selected from the three zones. However, two questionnaires could not be retrieved from the non-beneficiaries to give a sample size of 148. This gave a total sample size of 298 respondents. The tools of the analysis employed for data interpretation include: descriptive statistics, gross margin analysis, Foster, Greere and Thorbecke Poverty index, Z - test statistics and multiple regression analysis. A 5-point Likert type scale was used to capture the perception of the women on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of their enterprise. The findings of the study revealed that monthly gross income of about N24,006.7 was obtainedfrom groundnut processing with average return on investment of 26%and contributed about 94% to the household income of the women. The poverty indices revealed that 68% of the benefitting households and 59% of non-beneficiaries‟ households were non-poor with poverty gap of 0.123 and 0.296 for beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries respectively while the severity was 0.108 for beneficiaries and 0.282 for non-beneficiaries. The results of the regression indicates that age (β = 165.822, P<0.05), household size (β = 464.540, P<0.05), dependency (β = -732.52, P<0.05), years of formal education (β = -2016.520, P<0.01), years of membership in cooperative (β = 610.859, P<0.10), nature of involvement in enterprise (β = 5002.815, P<0.01), ownership structure (β = -5064.657, P<0.05) and access to market (β = -3009.693, P<0.05) significantly influenced the level of income of women groundnut processors in WIA programme. The programme significantly impacted on the poverty status of the women as the calculated t-value (5.59) for the mean difference of their income exceeds the critical value (1.97). For the SWOT analysis, the strongest point perceived by the respondents for the strengths was: „location of enterprise is good‟ (MWS=4.31); the weakness was: „profit margin is low‟ (MWS=4.37); the opportunity was: „provision of loan/credit with low interest rate will improve their enterprise‟ (MWS=3.88); and the threat was: „seasonality of market demand for product‟ (MWS=3.98). The study concludedthat some socio-economic and institutional factors influenced the household income of the women in WIA programme and the programme had significantly impacted on their poverty status. It was therefore recommended that the programme should be widened in scope so that more women can be empowered and theprogramme should improve on meeting one of its objectives of assisting in linking women to sources of credit so as to make more credit available to them and the programme should improve in meeting one of itsmain objectives of assisting in linking women to credit sources.
