The Federal Government has been urged to move beyond policy commitments and take concrete steps to mainstream gender and digital inclusion into Nigeria’s agricultural extension system.
A University of Ibadan researcher, Professor Stella Olusola Odebode, made the call in a policy brief titled “Mainstreaming Gender in Nigeria’s Agricultural Extension System for Inclusive Service Delivery,” developed under the AWARD Policy Innovation Project.
Prof. Odebode said Nigeria’s National Agricultural Extension Policy (NAEP) 2023 recognised the importance of gender inclusion and ICT-enabled agricultural extension, but warned that the commitments had not been sufficiently supported by dedicated funding, clear implementation responsibilities, measurable targets and effective accountability mechanisms.
She said the gap between policy intentions and implementation continued to limit women, youth, children, persons with special needs and other underserved groups from accessing agricultural information, technologies and advisory services.
According to the policy assessment, NAEP scored 23.5 per cent under the Gender and Agricultural Policy (GAPo) assessment, indicating that although the policy contains inclusive and gender-sensitive intentions, its operational integration remains weak.
Also, the policy scored 61.4 per cent under the adapted WEAGov-Digital Inclusion assessment, reflecting a moderate foundation but significant weaknesses in areas including women’s leadership, financing and accountability.
The assessment also found that issues such as social norms, care responsibilities, intersectionality, gender and climate resilience and safety concerns were not adequately addressed.
Odebode said: “These findings point to the need to move beyond broad policy recognition towards concrete implementation mechanisms that clearly define who acts, what is financed, how progress is measured and how women participate in decision-making.”
She said the situation was particularly concerning in the delivery of gender-responsive advisory services, noting that although all extension stakeholders surveyed recognised the importance of addressing gender needs, only 33.3 per cent of extension agents reported actually providing gender-responsive advice.
The researcher also noted that only 63.6 per cent of women farmers surveyed reported receiving digital advisory support, despite relatively high access to smartphones and the internet.
She argued that digital access alone could not guarantee inclusive agricultural extension, stressing the importance of institutional support, financing, appropriate content, capacity development and accountability.
Odebode also identified gaps between agricultural research and policymaking, saying only half of researchers surveyed routinely collected sex-disaggregated data, despite 91.9 per cent reporting institutional support and 89.2 per cent having access to digital research tools.
She said research was more frequently used to inform extension programmes, at 81.1 per cent, than to reach policymakers, at 59.5 per cent, or contribute to policy dialogue, at 56.8 per cent.
Inadequate research funding, identified by 51.4 per cent of respondents, emerged as the most severe constraint, while other challenges included weak links between research and policy, limited digital tools and inadequate gender expertise.
The policy brief recommended that the government develop a cost NAEP implementation framework with clear responsibilities, timelines, baselines and measurable inclusion targets.
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