The Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) Delta, despite the economic slowdowns driven primarily by COVID–19, presents details of the achievements of our investment portfolios in the Niger Delta, made possible through resilience and creative and innovative measures undertaken from July – September 2020 (Quarter 3 of 2020).
Acting under two distinct but interrelated program areas – economic development and peace building, and employing multi-stakeholder partnerships, the Foundation catalyzed community owned, market-driven, sustainable socio-economic results in the Niger Delta region during the quarter by tackling the root causes of economic instability, and conflict and fragility concerns. The Q3 report highlights results from our interventions, including relevant information on program management, lessons learned, and plans for the next quarter.
PIND’s market development projects gained traction in bringing about systemic change, meeting the overall set targets and this has triggered change in the overall climate for broad-based economic growth in the region.
During the quarter, 16,624 farmers and agripreneurs were empowered to improve their productivity and income in a sustainable manner. Also, a cumulative of 37,481 farmers and small businesses (more than 40% of them being women) adopted innovative business models (improved access to inputs, climate-SMART technologies and best practices), attaining a combined net income of 9.05 billion Naira between January and September 2020, and creating 10,305 new jobs within same period. The farmers were also trained on business skills using the Nigerian Agricultural Enterprise Curriculum (NAEC). By exposing farmers to their business challenges, farmers become more aware of their problems and see the value proposition of purchasing solutions. This has made business training for farmers using NAEC a very useful tool for the service providers to build their market base and increase their viability.
PIND also improved the quality of capacity building and vocational training to expand access to financial services for entrepreneurs, connecting 547 young job seekers to dignified and fulfilling work, with 481 of them transited into waged employment.
Scaling up the off-grid solutions to deliver energy access in rural communities, PIND leveraged 21 million Naira investments to address the challenges of energy access directly via an improved off–grid energy access to the poorest populations and businesses that operate in under-served or off-grid communities in the Niger Delta; connecting Over 1,600 persons from 116 households and 460 businesses to electricity supply.
With improved skills, 195 peace actors constructively resolved 46 emerging conflicts in various communities in the Niger Delta within the reporting period, fulfilling PIND’s 2020 peacebuilding program objective to prevent violent conflicts wherever possible, and where impossible, demonstrate and support long-term grassroots based mechanisms for peaceful conflict resolution.
A key lesson learned during this period is that when introducing initiatives, there is a need to focus on the value being offered. The COVID–19 pandemic offered the opportunity to test the resilience of the structures and networks put in place over the years.
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