INVESTIGATING THE PERFORMANCE OF SELF-HELP GROUP IN THE MANAGEMENT OF GROUNDNUT CAKE VALUE CHAIN: EVIDENCE FROM MOKWA LGA, NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

In an attempt to add to the body of knowledge on rural entrepreneurship development, this article
adapts women relationships framework in order to assess the impact of Self Help Group (SHG)
established by rural women entrepreneurs in Niger State, Nigeria. The aim is to investigate the
performance of SHG management system and its impact on groundnut cake value chains activities
in Makwa LGA, Niger State-Nigeria. Pragmatists paradigm otherwise known as mixed-methods
was deployed for this study using integrated research instruments for data collection, whilst
utilising random sampling to select respondents, questionnaire was used to collect information
from 76 respondents whilst engaging the overt strategy with semi-structured interview to gather
the views of 10 smallholder groundnut processors who are members of the SHG. The result of the
qualitative in-depth interviews reveals that the rural women entrepreneurs’ perception of the SHG
is an adventitious and gratifying type. This is because of its innovative nature where significant
change was seen from conventional entrepreneurial methods of processing to an innovative type
facilitated through women relationships such as women adopting division of labour amongst
themselves, having right to ownership of capital assets at hand, adoption of simple technological
equipment which led to high rate of groundnut output. The result of the quantitative analysis
revealed that the level of participation on average is 14.28% in 2018 and 70.56% in 2021 with
total amount of N 1,036,000 being disbursed within the same range while only N 993,000 was
recovered from the beneficiaries. Whilst the revenue from the market chain was pegged at N
1,287,540 in 2018 and N 2,273,585 in 2021. Also, SHG contributed to high level of supply which
had satisfactorily met demands from the wider domestic markets. Which holds a greater prospect
of exponential production. SThe study recommends that more support should be given to the SHG
so as to become organized especially in the aspect of policy formulation.