Beneficiaries' Perception of Effectiveness of Rural Development Programmes: Cross River Agriculture Development Project, Cross River State, Nigeria
Abstract
The study assessed beneficiaries' perceptions of effectiveness of rural development programmes with particular reference to Cross River Commercial Agriculture Development Project. One hundred and thirty-five (135) beneficiaries of CADP were selected for the study through a multi-stage sampling procedure. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Results revealed that many (36.29%) of the respondents were within the age range of 50years and above, 72.60% indicated married and educated (84.44%) with farming (92.59%) as major source of income. Respondents reported that CADP implementation was effective with grand mean of 2.11. Some of the identified constraints to effective implementation of CADP were untimely delivery of inputs by service providers (x = 3.42), difficult procurement process (x = 3.24), farmers have little control over approved grant as disbursement was in kind (x = 3.19). There was no significant difference among beneficiaries perceptions of the effectiveness of CADP implementation across the three agricultural zones in the study area (F-Cal =2.76, P<0.05). The study concluded that CADP implementation was effective. The study recommends timely delivery of production inputs to beneficiaries by service providers in similar projects.
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