Empowerment through Participation in Afforestation Programme among Toshia Community in Nigeria

Desert encroachment is a universal phenomenon that affects the developed and developing nations as well. This has become an impediment in Africa and particularly among Toshia community in Nigeria. This makes it necessary to adopt a measure through participation in afforestation programme to fight desert encroachment. This present, study attempts to determined level of perception, participation and empowerment among the participants in afforestation programme in Toshia, Nigeria. Self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 150 participants who were purposively selected. The data was analyzed using multiple linear regressions to determine the factors that significantly contributed toward empowerment of the participants of the afforestation programme. Finding of this study shows that participation is the most significant variable that predicts the level of empowerment (R2= .349, p = 0.000). The study concluded that for conservation programme to succeed, empowerment benefits must be tangible to the participants.