Evaluation of, Awareness and Accessibility of Anchor Borrowers’ Programme to Smallholder Rice Farmers in Jigawa State

Abstract

Nigeria is the largest rice producing country in West Africa, but also the second largest importer of rice in the world. The current government policy initiatives aim at prioritizing the rice sector and decreasing dependence on import thereby fostering production and supplying agricultural inputs. Nigeria is faced with mounting food import bills for the staple crop that has been consuming huge chunks of foreign exchange, particularly in times of low crude oil revenues, the government, in 2015, created the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), a micro-credit scheme for farmers of identified crops, including rice. Jigawa State is mainly an agrarian area, and is one of the major rice producing zones in the country. Three specific objectives guided the study. One null hypothesis was formulated and tested as 0.05 level of significance. Data for the study was collected through a researcher designed questionnaire. Result was analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Inferential statistic of binary logic regression was used to test the null hypothesis formulated. Result of the findings shows that there is high level of ABP awareness among smallholder rice farmers in the study area as well as high accessibility of farmers to the facilities provided. Government should give larger financial support to the programme and should be made available in all rice growing states of the federation was among recommendations made.