Employment and Income Generation Potentials of Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute’s Youth Empowerment Scheme in Nigeria

Abstract

In an attempt to contribute to unemployment reduction in the country, Agricultural Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI) implemented Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES) over the years, the study therefore examined the employment and income generation potentials of ARMTI YES. A three-stage sampling procedure was employed to collect data for the study. The first stage was the stratification of the country into different geopolitical zones, the second stage was the purposive selection of two states from each zone, while the third and last stage involved the selection of beneficiaries based on probability proportion to the number of the beneficiaries from each zone. Descriptive Statistics and t-test were used to analyze the data. The result of socioeconomic characteristics showed that beneficiaries of the scheme were male dominated (67.9%), a higher proportion (75.3%) of respondents were married, with a mean age of 38.6±8.2 and household size of 5±4.4. An average household head had 15±1 years of formal education. Supports derived from the scheme included broiler starter pack (64.2%), layer starter pack (17.3%), fish starter pack (12.3%), BoA loan (6.2%), training (100%) stipends (100%) and advisory services (44.4). Some (77.8%) of the beneficiaries were found to have generated between one (1) to six (6) employments while 22.2% of them have not generated any. Beneficiaries were found to have generated income between 105, 000 to 960,000 in one production cycle with a statistically significant mean difference indicating a positive effect of the support of the scheme on the income of the scheme beneficiaries. The study concluded that YES supported the beneficiaries in the areas of broiler, layer and fish starter packs, BoA loans, training, stipend training as well as advisory services. The increase in the beneficiaries’ income is attributed to the support derived from the scheme. It is therefore recommended that there is need to increase budgetary allocation to the scheme so as to accommodate more beneficiaries.