Coping strategies of rural households to drought in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Northwestern Nigeria

The impact of drought may vary from community to community and people over time. However, this depends on the effectiveness and sustainability of the coping and adaptive strategies employed by communities. This study examined the effectiveness and sustainability of coping and adaptive strategies to drought by people of the Sudano-Sahel Zone of Northwestern Nigeria. Data was gathered through households Interviews and Focus Group Discussions from the 18 communities selected using Systematic Random Sampling. The study reveals that target communities employed various coping and adaptive strategies in response to the climate variability of the zone. Among the popular strategies employed by the people include; petty trading, livestock rearing, use of the improved seed, and dry season farming. However, the Logistic Regression Analysis employed in the study revealed that the variable used can only explain 39.3% (R-2 = 0.393) of the sustainability leaving the remaining 60% unexplained. It is recommended that Government should provide easy access to financial support to these communities in form of soft loans/credit and access to existing Social Safety Programmes such as Anchor Borrower and Trader Money. The study also recommends the need for a social safety net as adopted in Ethiopia to build the resilience of the rural farmers.