Small-Scale Fish Farming and Poverty Reduction in Some Selected States in Southeast, Nigeria

Abstract

Despite the implementation of numerous poverty reduction programmes by successive governments, poverty remains endemic and pervades every geo-political zone in Nigeria. The poverty situation, coupled with the low uptake of fish farming technology in the south-east zone necessitated the need to examine the impact of small-scale fish farming on poverty reduction in selected states of the south-east geo-political zone of Nigeria. The dependent variable of the study is poverty reduction, proxy by household expenditure, while the independent variable is the small-scale fish farming, proxy by income, employment, food security, and consumption multiplier. The mixed-method research design comprising of quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (focus group discussion and in-depth interview) were used for data collection, while descriptive and inferential statistics were used in data analysis. A total of two hundred and seventy (270) small-scale fish farming households were selected from Anambra, Ebonyi, and Imo State as the population sample, using the multi-stage cluster sampling technique. Four hypotheses were tested using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) method of non-parametric test. The study findings suggest that small-scale fish farming in the study area has a significant positive impact on poverty reduction, as increase in each of the independent variables tends to increase the dependent variable. The paper recommended the establishment of fish farm settlements; granting of credit facilities to fish farmers as input factor’s promotion and enhancement of local content for fish farming among other policy prescriptions. These measures would promote small-scale fish farming for poverty reduction in the southeast geo-political zone of Nigeria.