Building resilience capacity: what matters for the Nigerian agricultural sector?

Agricultural systems are greatly affected by shocks; which impact on the production capacity. The extent to which these shocks affect production is however linked to the resilience of that system. Consequently, resilience capacities may change over time; and differ among the actor characteristics. The study examined the dimensions and level of resilience in the Nigerian agricultural sector; as well as the factors that drive resilience using data was obtained from the last two waves of the Nigerian Living Standards Surveys Measure /Integrated Survey on Agriculture (LSMS/ISA)-the 2015/2016 (wave 3) and 2018/2019 (wave 4). Three dimensions of agricultural systems resilience, viz Adaptive Capacity, Assets and Access to basic services/Safety nets were examined. The average resilience capacity across all dimensions was very low in the periods under study, given at 0.109 and 0.143 in 2015 and 2018, respectively. Resilience capacity dropped for female headed households between 2015 and 2018. However, while asset ownership contributed most to total resilience of the Nigerian agricultural system in both periods; adaptive capacity was more critical for females. The drivers of resilience capacity were identified as age, sex, household size, farm- size and education. Therefore, providing opportunities for agricultural actors to improve resilience capacity; especially to own physical and agricultural assets is key to building a resilient agricultural system. Building and sustaining agricultural resilience will also depend on empowering the actors through both formal and informal education and structured training programs.