Large-Scale Land Investments and Household Livelihood in Nigeria: Empirical Insights from Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

Despite the rising speculation of the consequences of Large-scale Land Investments (LLIs) in African countries, relevant empirical evidences to evaluate their implications on the households in the host communities remain scarce. This study therefore provides new empirical insights on the implications of LLIs on the households in the communities with LLIs in comparison with those in communities without LLIs in Nigeria. The choice of Nigeria is based on the fact that it is among the top twenty (20) LLIs recipients globally, and among the top ten (10) in Africa. Furthermore, Nigeria is among the few countries in Africa with nationally representative data like the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS_ISA), which contain relevant information on communities, households, and agricultural activities, and which are essential for empirical analysis of the relationships that are considered in the study. Much of the literature on the effects of LLIs are either case studies or reports or investigate the impact of LLIs deals known to have been associated with considerable displacement of segments of the populations that only held customary land rights. There is therefore the need to quantitatively understand the effects of LLIs on household livelihood. The study used Difference-in-Difference (DiD) approach, which is an important impact evaluation technique that estimates the counterfactual for the change in outcome for the households in communities with LLIs in comparison to those in communities without LLIs. The results from the analysis show a negative household livelihood outcome in communities with the presence of LLIs in comparison to the absence of LLIs in such communities.