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Decent work is increasingly recognized as an indispensable driver of sustainable development with the potential to lift households and communities out of poverty. Poverty is predominantly a rural phenomenon as rural areas are home to the majority of world's poor.
Dr. Mbah estimates that in developing and emerging communities, over 80 per cent of the poor live in the rural areas. In 2017, extreme poverty rates (defined as people living on less than $1.90 in purchasing power parity terms per day) were four times higher in rural areas than in urban areas. A large share of the rural poor still depend on low-productivity subsistence farming for their livelihoods lack access to productive asset and often rely on income from wage employment. Of the 2-3 million wage workers in agriculture, many depend on jobs in the rice farming on human labour. 59 per cent, or over 500 thousand child labourers (aged 10 to 14), are in rural areas, mostly in agriculture. Forced labour, too is prevalent in agriculture with the vision of Mbah to grow rural agriculture from what it use to be to agro-allied industry.
His target is to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030, and ending extreme poverty everywhere, will thus require increased policy focus on rural development. Placing industries in the rural economy high on national and international policy agendas is crucial to find sustainable, long-term solutions to the massive challenges affecting hundreds of thousands of people in Enugu State.
The PDP candidate has identified the numerous factors contributing to rural poverty and as well came with a programme to address it headcount: these comprise informality weak institutions, including ineffective law enforcement and compliance; the absence of an enabling environment for business; underdeveloped production systems; poor infrastructure and limited access to services, including education, finance and health-care.
Challenges facing rural economies are multifaceted and interwoven, and addressing them requires integrated, cross-sectional, multi-stakeholder and context-specific interventions. Close cooperation and coordination between all government departments is essential to ensuring interventions result in the hoped for impact.
Dr Mbah sees rural economies remain largely associated with primary agricultural production. Rural development is therefore considered one of the prime target of his administration efforts to address the decaying rural-community economy. And the productive transformation of both agriculture and the rural non-farm economy cannot be fully effectively without private driven economic concept being actively involved. Improving the quality of agricultural jobs - generally among the least protected, poorly remunerated, most hazardous and of low status - is essential to attract rural youth.
Effective solutions are also required to emerging challenges as changing employment relationships arising from outsourcing, including on rice farming and agro-allied processing plants. Dr. Mbah looked at building good industries in agro-allied status will eventually create jobs, facilitate agricultural growth, promote higher consumption and lead to significant economy-wide multiplier effects. Given the rise in global demand for food, the agricultural sector offers untapped employment opportunities. To attract a new generation of farmers, however the sector needs greater moderation, to increase its lucrativeness and dynamism and to raise its status as a source of decent jobs. Investing in education and skills of rural youth is the key for triggering productive transformation and promoting economic diversification in rural areas.
There is more to rural economies than just farming. Rural areas are characterized by a great diversity of economic activities, including processing and marketing of agricultural products, tourism mining and services. This is where Peter Mbah has sought to perform governance using his wonders in Pinnacle oil to raise the bar of agro-allied industry in Enugu State. Dr. Mbah is already providing support to a number of local farmers on all these issues in Enugu state on improving rural women's employability and economic empowerment.
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