Investigating the Relationship between Entrepreneurship Development and Poverty Reduction in Rural Communities in Edo State, Nigeria

This paper investigates the relationship between entrepreneurship development and poverty reduction in rural communities in Edo State Nigeria. Taro Yamani‟s statistical technique was used to calculate the sample size of the population. Stratified random sampling was used to distribute the survey questionnaires, out of the 215 questions distributed to the respondents, only 211 were completed and returned back for data analysis. SPSS version 20 software were employed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to analyze the data and compare the different population of mean existing within the groups and between the groups at a five-point-Likert scale of strongly agreed, agree, undecided, disagree and strongly disagree. The result of the analysis revealed that F- calculated (1270.644) is greater than F- tabulated (2.53) thereby rejecting the null hypothesis and accepts the alternative hypothesis that there is a significant relationship between entrepreneurship development initiative and poverty reduction in the rural areas in Edo State, Nigeria. The result of the study also showed that entrepreneurship initiative has translated positively towards poverty reduction in rural communities through jobs creation, development of rural areas, the establishment of small and medium-sized enterprises, youth empowerment through a soft loan provided by the federal government of President Good Luck Jonathan‟s You-Win Program among others. The following recommendations were made; the government of Nigeria should strengthen macroeconomic policies such as judiciary to prosecute corrupt government officials that loot government treasury. Secondly, the government abandoned project should be recycled and resuscitated to avoid a huge waste of resources and time wasted. Thirdly, there should be a need for both government and private sector partners through Private-Partnership Project (PPP) to complete most abandoned government projects such as skills and acquisition centres. This will help to achieve greater sustainability and economic growth in the country