IFAD to increase operations

Two months after launching a US $30 million dollar poverty alleviation project targeting 2.5 million Nigerians, mainly women, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is to increase its operations in Nigeria, the fund reported on Thursday. The West African country is facing a worsening poverty situation especially in rural areas, the fund said. More than 40 percent of the population live below the poverty line, and more than 50 percent have no access to safe water. IFAD's increased operations will also help the country's 125 million people "resolve challenges of a young democracy". President Olusegun Obasanjo, on Tuesday addressed the IFAD governing council in Rome, and called for more aid to the rural poor. "Foreign aid to the rural sectors fell by more than 50 percent between 1988 and 1999. Demands of the urban elite accentuate the rural-urban drift creating social and political instability," IFAD quoted Obasanjo as saying. Nigeria, he was reported as telling the council, has made progress in re-establishing economic and social infrastructures left in a state of collapse by years of military rule. Many rural areas have now been linked to electrical power, rural roads have been built or repaired, and educational programmes re-started. The $30 million project, launched in December 2001, will finance income- generating activities within poor rural households in eight northern states. Most of the beneficiaries are female-headed households. Nigeria is one of 115 countries where IFAD since its founding in 1977, has financed 603 projects, committed $7.3 billion in loans, and provided more than 1500 grants for research and technical assistance, thereby helping 254 million people to break the cycle of poverty, the agency said.