Turning Inward and/or Outward: Which Socioemotional Skills Pay for Agribusiness Entrepreneurs in Nigeria?

Socioemotional skills programs are widely used to promote economic empowerment, yet their returns may vary by skill-type and gender. This paper evaluates a socioemotional skills intervention for 4,500 agribusiness owners in a large-scale government program in Nigeria. Using a randomized controlled trial, the paper examines whether trainings that focus on interpersonal skills yield higher economic returns when combined with intrapersonal skills among men and women. Socioemotional skills trainings overall enhance women’s economic outcomes, raising business profits by over 50 percent. The interpersonal and combination treatments yield similar economic impacts. However, the findings show that the interpersonal skills training improves women’s interpersonal skills (negotiation, empathy and collaboration), and the combination training improves men’s intrapersonal skills (emotional awareness and perseverance). The positive impacts on women’s business performance are strongest in norm supportive environments — where there is little perceived judgment from the community for defying traditional gender roles — with no evidence of an effect on their agency or decision-making power. The results suggest that although socioemotional skills programs are effective at improving women’s economic outcomes, accelerating broader empowerment may require complementary programs to help relax gender norms.