FACTORS INFLUENCING TECHNOLOGY INVESTMENT DECISION ON COCOA PROCESSING OPERATION IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Agriculture occupies a prominent place in the economy of Nigeria. Cocoa produce is the single agricultural export commodity that has earned foreign exchange more than other crops. The crop is an important export and cash crop grown in some selected states and a major economic tree crop in Nigeria. It provides jobs and income to farmers until recently, its production has continued to decline over time due to a combination of several factors. The development of cocoa processing industries is very important and situation where the bulk of the cocoa beans produced in a country cannot be processed locally, is not in the best interest of any country. This study examined the factors influencing technology investment decision in cocoa processing operation in Nigeria. A purposive sampling techniques was use to select a representative number from the population of 130 Cocoa processors in Oyo state of Nigeria, out of which 108 were retrieved and analyzed for the study. Descriptive statistical methods such as frequency counts and percentages were used to analyzed socio-geographical characteristics of the respondents and correlation analysis was used as inferential statistic. The result revealed that decision to invest in plant machinery is positively affected by political trend, consumer trend, market competition, improved production, technology change, human resource and funding (Mean > 3.50). Correlation analysis shows that access to funds has a strong relationship (p<0.05) with probability of farmers investing in cocoa processing technologies. Given the above findings, it was thus concluded that funding is the main determinant for farmers investment decision in cocoa processing technology. The study therefore recommended that government and developmental support agencies should give special consideration to cocoa processors through specialized financial institutions or models in order to give leverage to the cocoa processors to afford the funding required to acquire machineries that would enhance production capacity of the cocoa farmers.