The study assessed the perceived effect of cocoa postharvest and value addition technologies in enhancing rural farmers' productivity in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was employed in the selection of 114 respondents. Data were generated using structured questionnaire and analysed using frequencies and mean. Results reveal that proper harvesting (95.61%), pod breaking (97.37%), fermentation (96.49%), drying (96.49%), sorting as well as grading (93.86%), packaging and storage of cocoa beans (92.98%) were the technologies available to the farmers. They were not trained on how to make chocolate, cocoa powder and cocoa butter. There was high extent of use of harvesting, pod breaking and drying packages and low extent of use of fermentation and grading packages. The perceived effect of these technologies on the cocoa farmers' productivity included reduction in quantity of waste ( =3.73) improvement in quality of cocoa beans ( =3.58) increased income ( =3.09) increase in shelf life of produce, among others. Accessing and using these technologies were faced with such challenges as high cost of machines (100%), lack of technical knowhow (95.61%) and preference of manual processing (92.11%). The study concluded that postharvest and value addition technologies enhance farmers' productivity. It is recommended that postharvest processes be mechanized, cost of machines for further processing and value addition to cocoa beans be subsidized and trainings on value addition be enhanced.

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The study investigated women participation in fish processing and packaging in Delta State, Nigeria. Multi stage sampling procedure was used in the selection of 180 respondents for the study. Data for the study was collected using structured questionnaire, focus group discussion and participatory observation. Data collected were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics, mean scores and inferential statistics. The result indicated that majority of the women were married (57%) and literate with few having non-formal education (38%). The result further indicated that the three major processing methods used by the women to include hot smoking (57%), air drying (25%), and salting (19.4%). Packaging methods include baskets (47.2%), paper cartons (37.2%), jute bags (46.0%) and palm rope (58.0%) used in tying staked fish. The probit regression analysis on socioeconomic factors affecting participation of women in fish processing and packaging indicated that age (0.00642***), education (0.00256**), income (0.3609**), access to credit (0.00068**), household size (0.2475**) and access to market (0.03150**) are all positive and significantly related to participation of women in fish processing and packaging. The study recommends the formation of cooperative societies among themselves to ease off some of the problems they encountered in their enterprise.

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