Assessment of Socio-economic Factors Influencing Financial Inclusion among Small Holder Cassava Farmers in Rivers State, Nigeria

Despite all the efforts made to financially include small holder farmers in Nigeria in order to boost their productivity, financial inclusion among small holder cassava farmers in the study areas still remains poor with low productivity and low income.This was what motivated the conduct of this study to assess the socio-economic factors that influenced financial inclusion among small holder cassava farmers in Rivers State, Nigeria.It was hypothesized in the study that no socio-economic factor has positive significant influence on participation in financial inclusion in the study area.A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to sample 357 respondents; data were collected through well-structured questionnaires and analyzed using both descriptive and logit regression model.The results of the study show that majority of the respondents, (44.3%) fell within the age bracket of 42-62 years, 67.5% of the respondents were male and 32.5% of them were female, and over 82.6% of them were married.Considering educational qualifications, 44% of them had no formal educational qualifications with average monthly income of N29,235.29 and family size of 6 members.The results also show that socioeconomic factors like experience in cassava cultivation and income level of the farmers positively and significantly influenced participation in financial inclusion at 1% and this finding rejects the null hypothesis.The study concluded that socio-economic factors influenced participation in financial inclusion in the study area with age in farming and income level as the main socio-economic factors influencing its participation.The study therefore recommended that small holder cassava farmers should be supported to acquire experience through sustained cassava cultivation by provision of farming support/incentives from the relevant government agencies/ministries.Also, small holder cassava farmers should adopt methods and practices that will improve their level of income generated from cassava cultivation to enhance their participation in financial inclusion.