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Post-harvest losses are major problems faced by farmers and this is due to their poor access to credit considered as a low rate of financial inclusion. This paper aims at analysing the relationship between financial inclusion and post-harvest losses in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU).

The study engaged data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation [FAO] for post-harvest losses. Also, it engaged data from Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest [BCEAO] for financial inclusion over the period 2000 to 2020. The study applied the Instrumental Variable Two-Stage Least Squares (IV-2SLS) and Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) to test the robustness of the results.

The results show that financial inclusion reduces post-harvest losses by 1.2%. Therefore, given this result, policies to improve farmers’ access to credit by increasing the rate of financial inclusion, is a necessary condition for the reduction of post-harvest losses.

Social implication of this study is that it contributes to the policy debate on the enhancement of food security by reducing post-harvest losses. The reduction in post-harvest losses and food security, will improve the welfare and livelihood of the society. This aims for the actualization of sustainable development goal of food and nutrition security (SDG-2).

The findings imply that efforts by governments and policymakers to improve farmers’ access to credit by increasing the rate of financial inclusion would reduce post-harvest losses in West African countries that are members of the WAEMU. Also, investment in education, ICT and building warehouse for farmers will help in reducing post-harvest losses. It implies that educated farmers have more opportunities to be financially inclusive than those who are not educated.

To mitigate uncertainties in the labour market, it has been argued that technology diffusion in entrepreneurship drive is essential to increase employment capacity. Against this backdrop, this study examined how social entrepreneurship and technology diffusion impact future employment in Nigeria. In addition, this study aims to contribute to the policy dialogue for the realisation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of decent work and economic growth (SDG-8) and industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG-9).

The data from the youth entrepreneurship with innovation (YouWiN) baseline survey was used. The study applied propensity score matching to achieve its objectives. This study defines social entrepreneurship as firms established solely to create social values. Similarly, technology diffusion is captured by the firm’s ownership of a website and communication with clients through email, while future employment is captured by the estimated number of people the business may employ in the next five years, if still in operation.

The results from the study show that social entrepreneurship and technology diffusion has a significant impact on future employment. The result implies that social entrepreneurship may contribute approximately 21% to the employment level in the future. Similarly, technology diffusion – ownership of a website and communication with clients through email increase the firm’s ability to contribute to future employment by 65% and 71%, respectively.

One of the limitations of the research is that the study is quantitative in nature. Thus, qualitative information that could have added additional value to the study was not considered. As a recommendation, further studies should consider using a mixed method by adding qualitative information while examining the concept of social entrepreneurship and employment.

These findings suggest that ownership of a website, communicating with clients via email and involvement in social entrepreneurship contribute significantly to future employment in Nigeria. This finding shows that social entrepreneurship is crucial for reducing future employment uncertainties. Social enterprises will enhance the capacity of the economy to attain sustainable economic development. Therefore, the study concludes by recommending that policies to enhance social entrepreneurship awareness and promotion should be implanted to expand the knowledge of social enterprise as a unique business entity that drives employment.

These findings suggest that ownership of a website, communicating with clients via email and involvement in social entrepreneurship contribute significantly to future employment in Nigeria. This finding shows that social entrepreneurship is crucial for reducing future employment uncertainties. Social enterprises will enhance the capacity of the economy to attain sustainable economic development. Therefore, the study concludes by recommending that policies to enhance social entrepreneurship awareness and promotion should be implanted to expand the knowledge of social enterprise as a unique business entity that drives employment.

Though prior studies have examined the contribution of entrepreneurship to employment; however, integration of technology diffusion in the concept of social entrepreneurship and employment literature is relatively sparse. Therefore, this study fills this gap by investigating how the diffusion of technology by social entrepreneurs impacts future employment in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges of accountability and development in Nigeria. In the literature, corruption is seen as an indicator of a lack of political accountability in most countries of the world, especially in less developed countries such as Nigeria. The Nigerian Government has taken several actions to address the problems of bad governance and corruption that have impeded economic development, but unfortunately these measures have not yielded the desired results.

Thus, this study examined accountability and developmental issues in Nigeria using secondary data and then made use of the auto-regressive distributed lag econometric technique to analyze the data.

The results from the study found that a rise in total government expenditure poses a danger of reducing Nigeria’s economic development in the long run and that control of corruption and political (the institutional variables) has a direct and significant effect on Nigeria’s economic development.

Therefore, upon these findings, this paper recommended that for Nigeria to experience development, corruption should be eliminated, and the Nigerian Government should spend on viable projects and economic activities that will be beneficial to the populace and the society at large and hence bring about economic development. Accountability is the hallmark of a prudent government that ensures efficient management of resources and transparency in the utilization of funds by the government. The absence of accountability mechanism allows corruption to thrive, which hinders the developmental process.

This paper argues that through information and communication technology (ICT) adoption, the youth will be engaged in all nodes of the agricultural value chains, thereby improving the level of employment and reducing post-harvest losses. The study examines the determinants of ICT adoption among the youth. In addition, it estimates the impact of ICT adoption on youth employment in agriculture towards the actualisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG-8, to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, productive employment and decent work for all.

The study engages data from Wave 4 (2018/2019) of the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). The logit regression, the propensity score matching and the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment are used as the estimation techniques.

The study underscores that educational level, access to electricity, location, age and income are significant determinants of ICT adoption among the youth. The findings also show that the youth's average weekly engagement in agricultural activities is about 24 h. In addition, the result reveals that ICT adoption can increase youth agricultural employment by approximately 21%. The mean difference indicates that those with access to ICT participate in agricultural activities more than their counterparts without ICT access by 29.46%.

One of the limitations of the study is that some of the variables such as insecurity, social protection/safety nets, that may have a significant influence on youth agricultural participation where not included in the model due to data constraint. As a recommendation for further studies, given data availability, such variables should be considered when examining youth-agricultural employment nexus.

Since ICT adoption has a significant impact on agricultural employment, this study proposes improved infrastructure facilities such as reliable power supply, lowering the cost of mobile and data subscriptions and better education facilities should be prioritised at all localities. This will enable the youth to embrace agriculture and help improve their socioeconomic welfare and livelihood.

Using Wave 4 of the LSMS-ISA, logit regression, propensity score matching and the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment, makes this study one of the very few to examine the impact of ICT adoption on agricultural employment among the youth in Nigeria. It implies that this study has provided empirical evidence and expanded the frontiers of knowledge on the extent to which ICT adoption influences youth agricultural employment in Nigeria.

Post-harvest losses are becoming a huge issue worldwide and are predominantly severe in developing countries. Seeking ways to control post-harvest losses is important because losses decrease farm income by more than 15% for approximately 480 million small-scale farmers.

The study engaged Wave 4 (2018/2019) of the Living Standards Measurement Studies–Integrated Survey on Agriculture, to examine the impact of soil technology such as fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides and certified crops on post-harvest losses in Nigeria. The study engaged descriptive statistics, logit regression and propensity score matching (PSM) to analyse the data.

The study found that approximately 38% of the household harvest was lost along the value chain. In addition, the results showed that among the indicators of soil technology, crop certification has a significant impact on the reduction of post-harvest losses. The implication is that from the nearest neighbour and kernel-based matching, the use of certified crops by households contributed to 1.62 and 1.36% reduction in post-harvest losses, respectively. In contrast, pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser use had no significant impact on post-harvest losses.

One of the limitations is that this study applied the PSM, the model did not account for endogeneity. Therefore, in examining this concept, further studies should consider applying other impact model such as the difference-in-difference to account for endogeneity.

While previous studies have examined how ICT adoption, storage mechanisms and value chain among others help to minimise post-harvest losses, the aspect of how soil technology can reduce post-harvest losses has been a subject of exclusion in the extant literature. This study empirically examines the impact of soil technology adoption on post-harvest losses in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between fiscal federalism and accountability in Nigeria. Corruption is a global plague and is endemic in nature. Several policies have been adopted by the Nigerian Government to institutionalize accountability and combat the scourge of corruption that have hindered socio-economic progress but to no avail.

Thus, this study examined fiscal federalism and accountability issues in Nigeria using secondary data and used the auto-regressive distributed lag econometric technique to analyse the data.

The results from this study reveal that fiscal federalism fails to mitigate corruption in the long run in Nigeria because of poor bureaucratic quality (BQ) and ineffective law and order (LOR).

Fiscal decentralization must be accompanied by legislations that will strengthen BQ of fiscal institutions at subnational levels and promote effective LOR.

This study recommends that for fiscal federalism to mitigate corruption in the long run, government must adopt appropriate policies to improve BQ and further strengthen LOR in Nigeria. The finding also suggests that to promote public sector accountability in Nigeria, government should ensure the simultaneous decentralization of expenditure and revenue to lower tiers of government. This study provides detailed empirical evidence that fiscal decentralization without accountability will accentuate public sector corruption, and in the long run, weaken local economic development initiative to boost growth and development.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Anchor Borrowers Programme (APB) on youth rice farmers’ productivity (yield/ha).

Using cross-sectional data from youth rice farmers in Kaduna State, Northern Nigeria, probit regression was used to examine the determinants of participation in ABP amongst the youth rice farmers. In addition, the instrumental variable (IV) regression approach that could mitigate selection bias due to unobservable factors resulting from the cross-sectional nature of the data was also used to determine the impact of the ABP on rice productivity of youth farmers.

Findings from the study indicated that marital status, education, access to credit and membership of cooperative association were the significant determinants of participation in the ABP amongst the youth rice farmers.

The implication of the result is that participation in the ABP leads to an increase in yield by about 42.46%, which shows the effectiveness of the ABP in the study area.

This study provides a rigorous econometric analysis of the determinants of ABP and its impact on rice productivity amongst youth farmers in Northern Nigeria. Thus, the study recommends improvement in credit accessibility, participation in the cooperative association and more education of the farmers to sustain the inputs distribution aim of the ABP.

This study aims to examine the relationship between mentorship, innovation and entrepreneurship performance in Africa’s largest economy. This study argues that mentorship and innovation play significant roles in driving entrepreneurship performance in the country. It explores the impact of mentorship on entrepreneurial development, including the transmission of knowledge, skills and networks.

This study analyzes the role of innovation in fostering entrepreneurial growth and competitiveness, particularly in the context of Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy. The authors engaged data obtained from the Youth Enterprise with Innovation (2019) and made use of the propensity score matching.

The findings suggest that effective mentorship programs and innovative approaches can enhance entrepreneurial performance, promote economic growth and contribute to sustainable development in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy.

The literature on entrepreneurship in Africa’s largest economy, Nigeria, has mainly focused on factors such as access to finance, the business environment and government policies, with limited research on the role of mentorship and innovation in entrepreneurship performance. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on entrepreneurship in Nigeria, particularly on the role of mentorship and innovation in entrepreneurship performance.

This chapter explores the adverse effects of COVID-19 lockdown on Nigerian households and offers suggestions for tackling the household conflicts, which is relevant to the society, and its contributions towards the broad economic activities in Nigeria. It adopts a conceptual approach, relying on extant literature and other relevant materials. The research draws on these references to project a model of the critical effects of COVID-19 faced by Nigerian households during COVID-19 pandemic. The study highlights the fundamental issues responsible for conflict among households in Nigeria during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Also, it unearths learning about the critical sources of household conflict; and explores the effects on households in Nigeria due to the lockdown. Weak enforcement of the provision of extant laws to curb domestic violence in Nigeria and inadequate punishments prescribed in the laws to discourage household conflicts. The chapter concludes with the need for a better legal framework that can regulate household conflicts. It, also, emphasises on increased government effort to intervene in household challenges, especially during an emergent issue such as COVID-19 pandemic. The study also suggested the need for a broad social services structure in Nigeria that can provide social security to households during an unexpected emerging situation such as COVID-19. The Violence Against Persons laws should be stringently enforced to discourage violence, to protect members of every household in Nigeria and to compensate the victims adequately for any loss or injury suffered due to violation of their rights.