Improving Poverty Alleviation Programmes in Nigeria through Small and Medium Scale Agricultural Development Projects

Abstract

This paper discusses the poverty situation in Nigeria, which has reached a monumental crisis, and has become a great concern to government at all levels. It has been observed that one of the principal causes of poverty in the country is unemployment resulting from joblessness especially among the youth of ages 15 to 40 years. The Federal Government has developed some programmes towards poverty alleviation, but with little or no results because the rate of unemployment and poverty situation have been on the increase in the last few years. Infact, the labour force sample survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (2012) reports that the overall unemployment rate amounted to 21.1% of the total force in July, 2010, indicating an increase from 19.7% in March 2009, and 14.7% in 2008. It is against the backdrop of the ineffectiveness of the various poverty alleviation programme of the government that an approach through agricultural development projects for accelerated employment generation as a way of poverty alleviation is being proposed in this paper. The paper proposes a case study of agricultural project.

Keywords: unemployment, poverty alleviation programme, farming system, agricultural development projects.