The study determined the factors influencing Community Based Youth Organisations' (CBYOs) involvement in rural development activities in Osun State, Nigeria and identified the types of rural development activities in which the organisations are involved. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 431 different CBYOs members who serve as respondents from 12 Local Government Areas in the State. Frequency count and percentages were used to summarize the data collected. Results revealed that larger percentage (31.7%) of the selected CBYOs were established from year 2006 to date with mean membership strength of 22.73 and standard deviation of 3.31. Sign-post erection and maintenance was the projects with the highest percentage (57.8%), deep well construction followed with 29.5% and procurement and installation of cassava processing machine with 21.6% to mention a few. Also, the factors that contributed to change in level of involvement of CBYOs in rural development activities were personal development (25.1%), social contact influence (19.74%) and community influence (16.4) among others. In addition, the results of inferential statistics showed that number of projects (r = 0.611, P ≤ 0.01), number of major organizers (r = 0.111, P ≤ 0.01), organization contribution to the projects (r = 0.153, P ≤ 0.05) and projects life span (r = 0.019, P ≤ 0.05) promote CBYOs involvement in rural development activities. Therefore, in order to exploit the potential of rural youth organisations' towards the development of rural community, specific strategies that could lead to sustainable rural development activities should be enhance among the Community Based Youths Organisations' (CBYOs) in the rural communities.

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This work was carried out in collaboration between all authors. Author OTA conceptualized the study, collected the data, performed the statistical analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Authors DOT and JOA managed the analyses and literature searches of the study. All authors read and approved the final manuscript and effected corrections based on reviewers' comments.

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This study assessed the youths’ involvement in oil palm fruit processing activities in Ondo State, Nigeria. It described the socio-economic characteristics of youths involved in oil palm fruit processing activities, determined their level of involvement, examined their perception and identified constraints associated with their involvement. Multistage sampling procedure was employed to select 120 respondents from the study area. Interview schedule was employed to collect relevant data, which was analysed with SPSS software package. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise the data while inferential statistics were used to draw inference on hypothesis. The results show that majority (63.3%) were male, 95.8% had formal education with a mean age of 27.2 ± 2.7 years. Picking of fresh fruit bunches ( = 2.71), packaging ( = 2.60) and gathering of bunches ( = 2.50) were the major activities youth involved in. Higher percentage (57.9%) of the youth had favourable perception towards involvement in oil palm fruit processing activities. Lack of modern processing facilities ( =3.65) and funds/inadequate credit facilities ( = 3.65) were the prime constraints to their involvement. Number of labour (r = 0.7460; p≤0.01) and income (r = 0.601; p≤0.01) of the respondents were significantly related to youth involvement. The study concluded that youth had moderate involvement in oil palm processing activities. However, agricultural development stakeholders like government should provide adequate and functional credits facilities to these youths to encourage their involvement.