ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AMONG WOMEN IN IKENNE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, OGUN STATE; AN APPRAISAL OF PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

Abstract

Purpose: This paper takes an incisive examination of economic development with specific focus on some of the problems confronting the involvement of rural women in development activities in Ikenne Local Government.

Methodology: The paper addresses this issue through qualitative methodologies by relying heavily on Primary and Secondary Sources of data collection consisting of oral Interviews with selected rural women in the Local Government. Relevant Text books, Journals, and Internet Sources were consulted to corroborate evidences from the findings.

Findings: Although women have served as critical agents of rural economic transformation, such roles has been limited by illiteracy, lack of adequate finance, lack of processing and storage facilities, unsteady power supply, poverty. Their impacts have been felt indirectly in subsistent agriculture, and directly at the domestic domain. The role of women in the economic development of Ikenne Local Government Area in Ogun State cannot be overemphasized. This is because, there is basically no aspect of economic development in Ogun State that rural women would not be found.  Generally, Ikenne rural women are majorly involved in agricultural activities such as planting, weeding, harvesting, processing and marketing. They also keep some domestic animals and birds. Rural women's limited access to productive resources, low educational level and illiteracy are contributors to rural women's poverty. The study discovered that Illiteracy affects extent to which benefits can be accrued from newer, non-traditional methods such as: information and communication technologies.

Unique Contribution to Practice and Policy: The research therefore recommended that rural women in Ikenne local government should be exposed to various economic platforms for knowledge mobilization, innovation, and partnerships for sourcing funds to carry out their economic activities. The work concluded that promotion of agricultural development should be through the provision of useful and relevant information to the farming communities by the extension services. There are many constraints making rural women farmers to be lagging behind economically, apart from lack of agricultural information. Further main constraints such as the lack of personal land and credit should be enhanced to suit the necessity of the rural women. Rural women are limited in terms of their potential in contributing to agricultural and socio-economic development.