This study was conducted in Delta State. It assessed the contributions of Fadama III empowerment activities toward youth development. The specific objectives were to: describe the socio-economic characteristics of the participants, ascertain the participation level of youths in the project, examine the determinants of youth empowerment by Fadama III, and identify the issues militating against youth empowerment in Fadama III. The multistage sampling procedure was used to gather data from 105 youths. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression were used to analyze collected data. The socio-economic characteristics result showed that youths from 28 – 32 years were highest (41.9%) in the project. Most of the youths (78.1%) involved in Fadama III were males, high proportion (55.2%) of the youths were married, 61.9% possessed secondary education and 88.6% cultivated less than an hectare. The level of youths participation was moderate (x ̅ = 2.53). The major constraints militating against the youth participation in Fadama III were poor capital base (x ̅ = 3.34), inefficient training session (x ̅ = 3.30), poor project finance (x ̅ = 3.29) and poor communication ideas in farming technology (x ̅ = 3.26). The regression result (R2 = 0.840) showed that the determinants of youth empowerment by Fadama III were sex which was significant at 1% level while marital status and educational level were inversely proportional to youth empowerment at 1% and 5% level of probability respectively. The study concluded that marriage and high educational status reduce the tendency of active involvement in Fadama III agricultural activities. It was recommended that training should be given to the married and educated youths.
Keywords: Determinants, Fadama III, Socio-Economic, Youth Empowerment
