The study empirically examined the micro-level determinants of woodland conversion to arable lands in
the Sub-Saharan Region of Africa, taking Eastern Nigeria as an example. This is informed by the
increasing effect of land-use change in recent time. The study was based on a sample size of 291
farmers from Enugu State, Nigeria. Three sets of micro-level factors (farmers’ agent action/practices;
farmers’ decision factors/characteristics; and institutional parameters) were examined. Specifically,
land access, credit access, market access, technology access, tenure regime, leadership status, and
membership of farmer groups, were the institutional parameters examined. Farmers’ background,
preferences and resources such as land per capita, woodland dependency for livelihood, off-farm
employment, fallow period, farming experience, educational background, farm holding/size, economic
orientation and age were the farmers’ decision parameters examined. Using the Kaiser or Eigen value
criterion, the analysis produced seven principal components (PCs) and non-zero loadings on each PC.
The result indicated that the highest subsumed indicants with their respective factor loadings are
conservation technology (67%), education (84%), woodland/forest dependency for income (37%),
membership of rural group (31%), dependency on fuelwood for domestic energy (38%), economic
orientation of the people (24%) and credit access (31%) for PC1, PC2, PC3, PC4, PC5, PC6 and PC7
respectively. This implies that, 84% of the illiteracy (education) is associated with the variances of the
hypothesised set of common factors for PC2. The findings indicated that policies that could improve
economic status of the rural communities will positively affect adoption of improved technology, and
access to yield enhancing technologies that will certainly reduce interference on forest or woodland.