ISSN 2360-798X
Abstract: Limited access to roads, storage, processing facilities, and potable water has been reported to severely impact rural women in several ways, contributing to quality of life, deteriorating health, ineffective time allocation, increased poverty rates, impaired agricultural productivity, and limiting achievement of Sustainable Development Goals targets 9 of building resilient infrastructure. Therefore, this study investigated the determinants of rural infrastructure among female farming households in Southwest Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling procedure selected 575 respondents from Ogun, Ondo, and Osun states. We analyzed the data using descriptive statistics, the infrastructure index, and the truncated Tobit regression model. The descriptive statistics show that the age and household size were 47.7±7.1 years and 5.5±1.6 persons, respectively. Most women (67.8%) were married and had primary education (67.1%). Most households were male-headed (65.7%), with farming experience of 19.84±7.9 years. Telecommunication (0.95) was the most accessed infrastructure, followed by electricity (0.93), market (0.72), road (0.66), health (0.58), and portable water (0.35), while modern storage facilities were the least accessed (0.03). The infrastructure access index was 0.61±0.1. Most (84.0%) of the women had moderate access, while 7.5% had high infrastructure access. Women who access credit through cooperative associations, more experienced farmers, and divorced women are most likely to access infrastructure. This study recommends that the public and private sectors collaborate in providing modern storage facilities for rural farmers. The government should embark on women-friendly agricultural programmes to ensure group collaboration, timely inputs, land for farming, and access to technologies for more women to embrace agriculture.
Keywords: Agriculture, Rural Households, Women Farmers, Infrastructure, Nigeria.