The Impact of Kwapreneur Empowerment Scheme on Socio-Economic Wellbeing of Beneficiaries in Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

One of the major issues that governments in most developing nations have had to tackle over time is the challenge of increasing poverty. In Nigeria, the reality of poverty is real as reliable statistics have shown. Thus, successive administrations at both the federal and state levels have initiated programmes targeted at combating the increasing poverty and improving people’s social wellbeing. Consequently, Kwara State Government introduced the Kwara State Social Investment Programmes (KWASSIP) in 2020. The programme was intended to be a poverty eradication initiative with several empowerment components and Kwapreneur scheme is one of them. However, despite the fact that, the agency has run numerous editions of the scheme, there are yet to be dedicated empirical studies targeted at assessing the impacts of the scheme. This study therefore examined the impact of the Kwapreneur scheme on the socio-economic wellbeing of beneficiaries. The study adopted survey as the research design; the population of the study consists of selected 660 existing beneficiaries of the scheme; multi-stage sampling approach was used to select 256 respondents as the study sample. The questionnaire was used as instrument of data collection and the data collected for the study were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools. The study revealed that, Kwapreneur empowerment scheme has significant effect on beneficiaries’ ability to afford food, decent housing and raise business capital. On the other hand, findings also revealed that the Kwapreneur empowerment scheme does not have significant effect on beneficiaries’ ability to expand their business scope. Based on the findings, the study made relevant recommendations that will further assist government and policy makers to gain deeper insights on how the scheme would be increasingly used to eradicate poverty and ensure improved wellbeing of all and sundry within the state.