PFD in Nigeria
Partners for Development first established operations in 2000 in the central belt of Nigeria, an area composed mainly of ethnic minorities, where poverty and malnutrition are widespread. PFD's programs began with a poverty alleviation focus in the four central and northern states of Bauchi, Benue, Kaduna and Nassarawa.
Since then PFD has built capacity of over 20 local partners to offer integrated micro-finance, reproductive health and agricultural enterprise programs, including improved marketing access in those four states. In 2008, PFD expanded its scope of activities by adding a comprehensive package of care and support for People Living with HIV/AIDS in Delta and Akwa Ibom states.
PFD programs in Nigeria reach approximately 850,000 people in rural communities with essential health and income-generation services. Our programs provide capacity-building training and on-going technical assistance to local partner NGOs and CBOs including financial and administrative management, program design, and project implementation and monitoring.
See PFD Nigeria map.
Nigeria Country Profile
Despite the wealth of Nigeria’s resources, including some of the world’s largest reserves of oil, the quality of life for Nigeria’s population has been steadily deteriorating. According to USAID, the percentage of the population living below the poverty line has increased significantly over the last two decades: from 27% in 1980 to approximately 70% today.
The 2009 UNDP Human Development Report ranked Nigeria at only 158 out of 175 countries, one of the lowest levels of human development in the world. Healthcare and other government services are highly centralized with doctors and other resources found primarily in state capitals and other large towns. Lack of access to health and other services has had serious impacts on the population, with 15% of children not living to see their fifth birthday and a maternal mortality rate that is 100 times that found in industrialized societies.
Current Program Areas
Strengthening Value Chains for Agricultural Enterprises
Strengthening Value Chains for Agricultural Enterprises
Through funding from USAID PFD implements a value chain focused project entitled “Expanded Access to Services for Agricultural Enterprises” (EASE) project. The goal of this 30 month project is to increase profitability for small agricultural enterprises in Benue, Nassarawa and Bauchi states. The project will:
1) Increase business management skills for 9,000 agricultural producers and processors through entrepreneurial training,
2) Strengthen local value chains through group coaching to 2,250 entrepreneurs and targeted technical assistance consultancies to 450 enterprises, and
3) Improve financial services to 9,000 borrowers through providing credit funds and introducing electronic loan payment technology.
Lack of access to agricultural finance and to technical assistance prevents microfinance clients from adopting a more rigorous approach to their production/processing enterprises. Borrowers’ problems are compounded by the risks of operating on a cash basis in a mainly subsistence economy with high incidence of theft. EASE directly targets these constraints and facilitates agricultural producers’ and processors’ access to credit, training and technical assistance, while increasing safety for financial transactions.
PFD works with ten Nigerian Microfinance partners to implement EASE. PFD trains these partners to integrate business development skills (BDS) training into their loan methodologies. Borrowers are for the most part female agricultural producers, processors or traders. PFD contributed to developing one of the key training curriculums used entitled the Nigerian Agricultural Enterprise Development (NAEC). Once BDS skills training is complete, the implementing team gathers together various value chain “actors” (who contribute to adding value at each stage of a product between the raw material and the end user market) in order to identify constraints and opportunities for more profitable cooperation. Based on their recommendations, the team then organizes further technical assistance. Expanded credit funding is distributed through this project through financial support from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation.
Small Enterprise Development: Micro Credit and Business Development Services
With support from the World Bank in 2008 and in partnership with the Fantsaum Foundation in Kaduna State, PFD has been implementing a business development services (BDS) program for small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). The program aims to improve productivity, sales & profit and therefore increase employment opportunities for agricultural producers and processors using the Nigerian Agricultural Enterprise Curriculum, which PFD helped to pilot.
Objectives of Curriculum are to:
- Enhance farmers understanding of basic business concepts to improve their production and maximize their profits
- Help farmers understand relationships in the value chain (suppliers, producers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers)
- Introduce farmers to basic techniques in planning; income projections; savings; etc.
- Improve farmers skills in financial management, record-keeping, and market analysis
Additionally, PFD's micro-credit and business skills training enables rural households to access small loans, which mainstream financial services will generally not provide. PFD and its 16 local implemting partners have provided such loans to over 35,000 borrowers, about 90% of whom are women.
Reproductive Health
PFD began implementing community-based reproductive health programs f
unded by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 2001. Since then, PFD has built capacity of 15 local NGOs to integrate family planning and reproductive health activities with micro-finance services reaching over 35,000 borrowers. Facility- based services include counseling related to safe motherhood (ante and postnatal health care and delivery services by trained midwives).
Integreated Health and Credit Services:
- Provide a comprehensive solution to poverty alleviation
- Health services increase microcredit sustainability and performance
- Reduce loan defaults/diversions and customer attrition
- Microcredit services facilitate health service delivery
- Regular credit meetings serves as platform for health education
- Increased clients’ income for family health care
In May of 2009, PFD infused an additiona $1.5 million (as a Program Related Investment (PRI) from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation) into partners credit programs.
HIV/AIDS
In August of 2008, with funding from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), PFD and Daughter's of Charity began a comprehensive package of care for People Living with HIV/AIDS in Delta and Awka Ibom states.
The project, “Counseling, Care, and Antiretroviral Program (CAMP), focuses on Adult and Pediatric Care and Treatment, Antiretroviral Treatment, care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission, Prevention and HIV Testing and Counseling. CAMP has so far reached or exceeded most of its ambitious Year One targets, including providing 10,000 people with HIV/AIDS prevention messages; 7,000 people with HIV testing and counseling; 600 people with antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and other treatments; 180 pregnant women with ARV prophylaxis; and 200 orphans and vulnerable children with care.
Priority Needs
Orphans and Vulnerable Children
A staggering 1.8 million children in Nigeria have become orphans as a consequence of AIDS.
Working with the CDC and PEPFAR, PFD is implementing an HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment program in the Niger Delta region. This program includes support for 200 orphans and vulerable children who have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS or are otherwise affected by the disease.
PFD wants to help many more similarly affected children beyond the 200 now supported through our current funding.
With additional resources we could reach out to more children and provide them with school books, clothing, medicines and health care treatment as well as psychological and social support in the form of after-school clubs.
