The Role of Microfinance Institutions in Financing Small Businesses

SMEs all over the world play a strong role in national development. This is attributed to the massive employment it provides to the citizenry of the country where it exists. The financing of these ‘’goose’’ which have being laying so many golden eggs has come under scrutiny by academics and practitioners. Due to the recognition accorded this very important sector, the Nigerian government established microfinance banks in the year 2007 to serve as mechanisms for financial sources for various SMEs. This study explored the roles of these micro finance banks and institutions on small and medium enterprises as well as the extent to which the small businesses have benefited from the credit scheme of microfinance banks. Primary data was obtained via interviews conducted in 15 small businesses across Lagos state with their responses summarized in tables. This study advocates the recapitalization of microfinance banks to enhance their capacity to support small business growth and expansion and also to bring to the knowledge of the management of microfinance banks and institutions the impact of the use of collaterals as a condition for granting credit to small businesse

Determinants of Entrepreneurial Skill Acquisition among Agricultural Students in Nigeria Universities in Ogun State

Entrepreneurial skill acquisition among agricultural students in Nigeria Universities has been of major concern due to explosion rate of unemployment in the country. In the study that investigated the determinants of the entrepreneurial skills acquisition among agricultural students in universities located in Ogun State, 40 students were purposefully selected University of Agriculture, Tai Solarin University of Education and Olabisi Onabanjo University making a total of 120 students as the study sample. The findings revealed that majority of the students were in the age grade of 21 – 24 years (63.1%), male (71.7%), Christian (52.5%) and from Department of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Extension and Rural Sociology, Home and Hotel Management Department, Department of Animal Production, Department of Crop production Department of Soil Science and Farm Mechanization and Department of Renewable Resources. Majority of the respondents posited that they had acquired fish, pig, crop, poultry rabbit, cattle, snail and grass-cutter productions. Also, the students posited that they have leadership skill, self confidence, ability to organize resources to achieve goals, innovate and speculate, have need for achievement and success in skill acquired and lastly possess strong desire for responsibility and independence respectively. Also 70.8% of the respondents agreed that the level of the skill acquired determined their efficiency as entrepreneur. The study  therefore recommended that economic policy and programs that are geared towards self reliance for individuals such as Open Apprenticeship Scheme, Graduate Employment Programs etc and other policies that encourage or make it easy for entrepreneurs to acquire the needed funds e.g.; Peoples Bank of Nigeria, Funds for Small-Scale Industries (FUSSI), co-operative societies etc must be established throughout the nation and also empowered by the Government to assist entrepreneurs in Nigeria especially graduates from Universities. Keywords: Entrepreneur, Skill acquisition, Agriculture, Students, Universitie

Determinants of Entrepreneurial Skill Acquisition among Agricultural Students in Nigeria Universities in Ogun State, Nigeria.

Entrepreneurial skill acquisition among agricultural students in Nigeria Universities has been of major concern due to explosion rate of unemployment in the country and this formed the basis for the study in Ogun State. Forty (40) students were purposefully selected University of Agriculture, Tai Solarin University of Education and Olabisi Onabanjo University making a total of 120 students as the study sample. The findings revealed that majority of the students were in the age grade of 21 – 24 years (63.1%), male (71.7%), Christian (52.5%) and from Department of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Extension, Home and Hotel Management, Animal Production, Crop production, Soil Science and Farm Mechanization and Renewable Resources. Majority of the respondents posited that they had acquired entrepreneurial skills in animal and crop production among others. Also, the students posited that they have leadership skill, self confidence, ability to organize resources to achieve goals, innovate and speculate, have need for achievement and success in skill acquired and lastly possess strong desire for responsibility and independence respectively. The study concludes that 70.8% of the students agreed that the level of the skill acquired determined their efficiency as entrepreneur. The study  therefore recommended that economic policy and programs that are geared towards self reliance for individuals such as Open Apprenticeship Scheme, Graduate Employment Programs etc and other policies that encourage or make it easy for entrepreneurs to acquire the needed funds especially graduates from Universities. Keywords: Entrepreneur, Skill acquisition, Agriculture, Students, Universitie

Perceived Effects of Livelihood Diversification on Farmers’ Household Poverty Status in Ogun State, Nigeria

The study investigated perceived effects of livelihood diversification on farmers’ household poverty status in Ogun State. Data were collected from 132 farmers from the 4 agricultural zones of the state using multistage sampling procedure and snow ball approach. The study reported that majority of the farmers were above 40 years of age, males, married, had one form of education or the other, earned more than N100,000.00 annually and were having between 3–4 children. Also, cassava, maize, yam and green vegetable production are the most common agricultural related livelihood activities involved in by all the farmers. However, farmers’ involvement in non-agricultural activities was low. Major influencing factor to livelihood diversification was lack of credit facilities. The farmers perceived that diversifying livelihood activities will definitely enhance income generation of their household and it is a form of survival strategy of rural household especially in times of drought and famine. Farmers’ perception of the effect of diversifying on their livelihood activities on poverty status was high (  = 38.8). The study concluded that significant relationships exist between perceived effects of livelihood diversification on farmers’ poverty status and sex, educational level; factors influencing their involvement in diversification of livelihood activities; poverty status and possession of welfare attributes. The study therefore recommends that there is need for the urgent provision of basic infrastructure across the state and farmers should be trained in areas of enterprise combination for maximizing their profits with a better extension services and inputs. Keywords: Perception, effects, livelihood, diversification, povert

Genetic fingerprinting and phylogenetic diversity of Staphylococcus aureus isolates from Nigeria

Genetic fingerprinting of 18 different isolates of Staphylococcus aureus from Nigeria using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was carried out. Ten out of 100 Operon primers showed polymorphism among the isolates tested generating 88 bands, 51 of which were polymorphic with sizes ranging between 200 and 3,000 bp. All the isolates were classified completely into two major groups (Sa-1 and Sa-2) with twelve different subgroups. Sa-1 group originated from human while isolates from plant and animal origins formed the Sa-2 group. The twelve different subgroups suggest adaptation of S. aureus in the different host cells. This indicates possible relationship between host origin and genetic variation among S. aureus isolates. The DNA fingerprint defined for each race of S. aureus could be useful in epidemiological studies, medical diagnosis and the identification of new strains and their origins. (African Journal of Biotechnology: 2003 2(8): 246-250

Impact of Micro-Credit on Poverty Alleviation among Contact farmers’ households in ogun state, Nigeria

This study examined the impact of micro-credit on poverty alleviation among farming households in Ogun State, Nigeria. One hundred and thirty-two (132) respondents were randomly selected from villages/towns in the State using purposive and multistage random sampling techniques. The respondents were interviewed using a well-structured questionnaire. Data collected from the respondents were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools. Findings on the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents revealed that majority 63.6% were female, 56.1% fell within the age range of 41-50 years, 64.4% were married, 58.3% had no-formal education, 79.6% had an household size between 1-6 members, 31.1% were farmers, 69.7% had between 6-15 years of occupational experience and 64.4% were non-members of cooperative societies. The result of the logit regression analysis showing the impact of micro-credit on poverty alleviation revealed that age, educational status, sex, farm experience and annual farm income had positive impact on the poverty alleviation through micro-credit while household size had negative impact on the poverty alleviation through micro-credit in the study area. With respect to barriers of poverty alleviation through micro-credit, findings showed that most of the respondents faced one form of barrier to the other out of which 18.2 per cents faced problems associated with location, lack of land ownership and tenure and 9.1 percents faced barriers associated with lack of pro-active government support for involvement by the poor. Thus, the study concluded that poverty level is still high among the respondents despite the high experience of the respondents in their various occupations. This may be caused due to their low level of education. Therefore, this study recommends that government policies should improve the level of education among household to increase profitability and productivity. Keywords: Poverty, Micro-Credit, Farming, Productivity, Profitabilit

Evaluation of rice genotypes resistance to bacterial leaf blight in Togo

The present study aimed to evaluate rice genotypes for resistance to bacterial leaf blight caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae. Twenty-one genotypes including six genotypes grown in Togo, two improved genotypes from Africa Rice and thirteen isogenic lines from IRRI were tested. The results revealed differential reactions of genotypes in the expression of the disease. Additive main effect and multiplicative interaction analysis allowed identifying three groups of genotypes according to the level of the disease expression: resistant group made up of the genotype IR24 and all the twelve near isogenic lines tested except the line IRBB5, medium resistant group made up of three genotypes grown in Togo (NERICA4, NERICA8 and NERICA14), the genotype Giganté from AfricaRice, and susceptible group including five genotypes fromITRA (TGR203 and IR841), from AfricaRice (NERICA19 and TOG5681) and the near isogenic line IRBB5 from IRRI. The results provided useful information indicating that none of the grown varieties tested was resistant to BLB, thus revealing a potential risk of epidemics since these genotypes were only medium resistant to susceptible. However, experiments under field conditions in different environments of Togo are needed.© 2012 International Formulae Group. All rights reserved

Genetic variation and relationship in Staphylococcus aureus isolates from human and food samples using random amplified polymorphic DNAs

A genetic characterization of 18 different isolates of Staphylococcus aureus using random amplified polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs) was carried out. Out of one hundred primers tested, ten showed polymorphism. The amplification reactions with the 10 primers generated 88 bands, 51 of which is polymorphic with band size ranging between 200 and 3,000 bp. Variation and relatedness between different isolates were determined by converting RAPD data into a Jaccard similarity matrix and analysed by UPGMA (unweighted pair-group method, arithmetic average) to produce completely twelve different groups at 100% Jaccard similarity and at 50% coefficient of similarity. The isolates were classified into two major groups, the first comprises of mildly and weakly virulence, while the other group are the highly virulence Staphylococci. The results demonstrated that the RAPD technique may be of great use in the classification of Staphylococcus aureus.African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 4 (7), pp. 611-614, 200