Cultural Trade: Promoting Entrepreneurial Women Cultural Herbs Traders in Nigeria

Cultural Trade/Industry is a new concept for the activities of traditional industries including herbal medicinal dealers and largely remains a small family business dominated by women. However, despite their pivotal roles in Nigeria Health Care Delivery System, they continue to suffer neglect from government. This paper attempts to investigate the activities of this cultural trade with a view to foreground its contribution to the society. Multistage sampling procedures were used in the study. 72 Traders were randomly selected in 6 Local Government Development Areas of Ondo state, Nigeria. In addition, 504 clients were interviewed but 21 respondents, not well captured were rejected, remaining 483 clients. The questionnaires were analyzed using chi square analysis. Descriptive statistical techniques (frequency and percentages) were used to summarize the data collected. Secondary data were extracted from books, journals and other relevant publications. The study revealed that Cultural Herb Trade is predominantly dominated by women. The Traders have low entrepreneurship orientation, displaying their wares under sheds in the public markets; earning less than US$1000 as profit yearly. They claimed inability to access loan from support institutions due to their poor financial literacy and abandonment. The findings showed that socio-economic attributes of Cultural Herbs Traders had significant effect on their performance (x2 = 6.162877, df = 2, pr = 0.029). The findings also showed significant relationship between the treatment modalities of Cultural Herb Traders and their performance (Person x2 = 50.18154 Pr = 0.000). Moreover, there existed significant relationship between the networking strategies of Cultural Herb Traders and performance (x2=44.63424, df = 2, pr=0.0009). It was found that Cultural Herb Traders provided both preventive and curative health care services with significant association between performance and patronage by clients (x2=254.8922, df = 6, pr=0..000), especially in the areas of malaria, infertility and small pox diseases to mention a few. 94% of the Clients indicated their continuous support to patronize the Traders because their medicines were efficacious. 89% of the clients/customers/buyers signified their intention to increase their patronage because of the good performance of their treatment. The study concluded that in spite of the prominence of these cultural herb traders, there is inadequate financial and research assistance from academia and corrupt government. Thus, Local Government may want to increase their research budgets to embrace modernization of cultural herbs trade sector.