Abstract

Smallholder agriculture today is very much feminized because young people and men tend to migrate from rural areas to urban areas. While women are engaged in feeding their families and making money, many of them engage in agri-businesses are not very successful. One of the reasons is most of these women are rural and marginalized through ‘generalized’ agricultural communications which sometimes ‘skewed’ their capability and relevance in agricultural value chain. In many cases, agricultural communications merged them as ‘special stakeholders’ for policy formulation and implementation. In value chain approach to agri-business, women are usually found in planting, harvesting, and post-harvest. There is dearth of strategic information/communications to boost women participation in entire value chain in Nigeria. Therefore, the study sought to examine women participation in Agricultural value chain in Zamfara State, with the following objectives. (i) To identify the constraints of women participation in agricultural value chain. (ii) To examine effective ways of improving women participation in Agricultural value chain in study location. Descriptive survey research was deployed using both questionnaire and in depth interview where 100 copies of questionnaire were retrieved and analyzed from women farmers in Tsafe and Shinkafi local government of Zamfara state. Findings revealed that there is urgent need for improved strategic communications/information on women participation in Agricultural value chain Nigeria. Therefore the paper recommended the development of special agricultural communication framework with the aim of improving women participation in Agricultural value chain for food sufficiency and sustainability in Nigeria.