Assessment of stakeholders’ contributions to livestock development in Delta State, Nigeria: Rural infrastructure intervention

Abstract

Abstract The study assessed the contributions of stakeholders to livestock development through provision of infrastructure to rural areas of Delta State, Nigeria. The objectives were to describe the socio-economic characteristics of respondents, appraise the role of external stakeholders in livestock development, verify any existing relationship between livestock development and rural development indicators and identify the challenges faced by respondents. A purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select the three major towns and 180 respondents. Data were collected by questionnaire and subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. Result obtained showed that majority of the respondents were males (68.3%) with higher national diplomat (HND)/First degree (33.3%) and have a mean age of 42 years. The first four highest external stakeholders were skills training and entrepreneurship programme (94%), youth agricultural entrepreneurs programme (90.6%), job creation agency (89.4%) and FADAMA (80.0%) that promoted livestock development. A significant relationship was observed based on infrastructural contributions to livestock development (p < 0.05) among the variables: market, water project, market and roads. Serious challenges included high cost of feed facilities (mean = 3.69) and insufficient power supply (mean = 3.49). The study concluded that the more available the rural infrastructure intervention, the more developed the livestock sector. The study recommended that stakeholders should make their extension agent available to livestock farmers.