Abstract

This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of e-wallet in fertiliser distribution on gender basis among vegetable farmers in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Four Local Government Areas (LGAs) were selected for the study because of the present of registered farmers. Three communities were randomly selected from each LGAs. In all, 120 registered vegetable farmers were selected using multistage sampling procedure. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data at p=0.05. Results show that 45.6% were Male Vegetable Farmers (MVF), while 55.4% were Female Vegetable Farmers (FVF). Mean age of MVF was 50.6 ? 10.2 years while that of MVF was 42.6 ? 9.5 years. Also, 63.3% of MVF had formal education compared to 55.8% of FVF. Majority of registered FVF (73.4%) and MVF (82.4%) got the information about fertiliser procurement at subsidised rate on their phone. However, only 42.0% of FVF procured fertilisers through lay down process of ewallet whereas, majority of the MVF (57.3%) claimed that e-wallet is moderately effective in procurement of fertilisers. There was significant difference (p= 0.01, t=3.75) in the level of use of e-wallet between MVF and FVF. Women should be given priorities in the design and implementation of electronic wallet introduced by the Nigerian government. More so, the process of procurement should be made less cumbersome to allow easy distribution of fertilisers to farmers which will allow the farmers to benefit from available subsidies and thereby reducing corruption in Nigeria?s fertiliser distribution system.

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