Archaeological Resource Management in the Context of Agricultural Expansion in Kebbi State

Agricultural expansion driven by government-sponsored irrigation programmes, land tenure reform, and population growth is progressively altering the landscape of Kebbi State and threatening a rich archaeological resource base that remains largely uninventoried. This study examines the management challenges posed by agricultural expansion for archaeological resources in Kebbi State, using a combination of satellite change detection analysis, site survey, and institutional stakeholder interviews to document the scale of the problem and evaluate existing management responses. Satellite imagery comparison between 2015 and 2024 shows a thirty-eight percent increase in cultivated land area in two agricultural frontier districts of the state, corresponding to documented destruction of mounded settlement sites and riverside artefact scatters. Field visits to twenty sites along agricultural expansion frontiers confirmed active ploughing disturbance at fourteen and complete destruction at three, all of which had been registered on the NCMM site inventory. Institutional interviews reveal that the Kebbi State Agricultural Development Programme has no heritage compliance protocol in its environmental screening process, and NCMM zonal staff are not routinely consulted during project planning. The study draws on the archaeological resource management literature to propose a preventive management protocol integrating heritage survey into agricultural project environmental review, including a rapid assessment trigger based on proximity to known heritage zones. Implementation recommendations target both the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and the NCMM Sokoto-Kebbi zonal office. Keywords: archaeological resource management, agricultural expansion, Kebbi State, site destruction, heritage compliance.