Analysis of the Rural Youth Engagement in IFAD Value Chain Development as a Panacea to Unemployment in Southeast Nigeria

Abstract

Analysis of the rural youth engagement of IFAD value chaindevelopment program as a panacea (way-out) to unemployment in Southeast,Nigeria was the main aim of the study. The socioeconomic characteristics, valuechain interventions, readiness of the youth to implement the skills acquiredand factors hampering the youths’ readiness to implement the skills acquiredwere looked into. The data was analyzed using statistical tools such asdescriptive statistics, principal factor analysis and inferential statistics ofpaired sample t-test in order to arrive to a logical conclusion. The factorshampering the youth readiness to implement the skills were rotated intoawareness factors such as: Sex (-0.747), inadequate market arrangement (0.687)and inadequate fund (0.896) and institutional factors such as; age (-0.426), level of education (-0.797), high cost of labor (0.882) and absence of local fabricators (0.891). Furthermore,Sex, Age, Year of formal learning, Household size and mean monthly income werethe socioeconomic variable that influenced the youth’s readiness to implementthe skills acquired and the t-value of 10.5386** indicated that there was asignificant difference in the mean income of the youths before and after theirengagement.