Entrepreneurial Resilience and Empowerment among Rural Women Entrepreneurs in Katsina State, Nigeria: Experiences of the Post-Subsidy Adjustment

Abstract

This study examined how rural indigenous women entrepreneurs in Katsina State adapted their microenterprises and reassessed their standing within household and community after the removal of the national petrol subsidy in May 2023. An exploratory design was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Hausa with ten women purposively sampled across agro-processing, textile dyeing and petty trade in three rural local government areas (Funtua, Charanchi and Kankia). Transcripts were analysed through codebook-driven Framework Analysis organised around cultural theory, social capital theory, empowerment theory and intersectionality. Participants reported steep and near-simultaneous increases in fuel, firewood, raw material and transport costs alongside falling customer purchasing power. Several were accused of profiteering by customers facing the same inflation. Adaptation drew on a common repertoire of quantity downsizing, direct sourcing, transport pooling, product reformulation and mobile money. All ten belonged to rotating savings groups (adashe), while formal banking, government relief and NGO support were absent from every account. Empowerment moved unevenly: household authority widened only marginally, whereas community-facing agency, expressed through mentoring and cooperative office, was universal. Findings rest on ten interviews in one state, analysed by a single coder, and are offered as exploratory. They identify testable propositions rather than population estimates. The study documents resilience and empowerment forming under a dated, compressed macroeconomic shock rather than under generalised structural disadvantage. It identifies a setting in which bonding social capital operates with no bridging counterpart, and shows that inherited craft is one route into indigenous trade rather than a defining feature of it.