Women in twenty-five communities spread across nine Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Niger State in Nigeria cultivated and sold agricultural produce but, had been chronically vulnerable economically (These 25 communities of Beji, Chibo, Dagodnagbe, Dan Zaria, Dankuwagi, Doko, Edozhigi, Emiworo, Etsutsagi, Kakakpangi, Kasakogi, Kodo, Kontagora, Kpatsuwa, Lanle, Magandu, Makusidi, Masaha, Ndayako, Tungan Gari, Tungan Kawo, Tungan Wawa, Wushishi, and Zungeru are located in the 9 LGAs of Bosso, Chanchaga, Gbako, Katcha, Kontagora, Lavun, Mokwa, Paikora, and Wushishi).
For more than 15 years, these women had been grew groundnut, cowpea, soyabeans, rice, melon, and maize on small holdings of less than half a hectare each. Without support from the government, NGOs, or development partners, they faced several challenges – ranging from lack of formal titles to their lands, to a lack of funds to buy improved seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tools and hire labor.
Unsurprisingly, all their hard work only produces low yields, and they cannot afford to cultivate more lands to increase production. They barely fee their families, and in an event of change in rainfall patterns like droughts or floods, it leads to food insecurity.
ACReSAL
In July 2023, the Niger State Project Management Unit (SPMU) of the World Bank-supported Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Ard Landscapes (ACReSAL) Project of the Government of Nigeria, began an intervention in these communities.
In collaboration with Niger State Agricultural and Mechanization Development Agency (NAMDA), the Niger SPMU identified one hundred poor and vulnerable women farmers, and provided each with improved seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides for one cropping season. In total, ACReSAL distributed 2,000 kgs of rice seeds, 4,550 kg of soyabean, and 200 kg of maize seeds, 140 fifty-kilo bags of NPK and 70 bags of urea, 550 bags of organic fertilizers and 400 liters of herbicides.
Impacts
Despite receiving no training, the women relied on their farming experience and produced a bumper harvest in December 2023. Most women harvested around ten 65-kilo bags per hectare – when they used to get less than two bags.
Thus, Jummai Yabagi, a beneficiary farmer from Kodo community in the Bosso LGA, harvested ten 65-kilo bags of soyabean from her 1 ha farm – instead of her usual 2 bags – and earned 450,000 Naira (~USD 275). A grandmother of triplets from her widowed daughter, who had lost one to malnutrition, she was able to nurse the two remaining children back to health and even send them back to school.
Another beneficiary, Fatima Abubakar of Edozhigi, a 52-year-old mother of six, and a rice farmer for over 30 years, spoke of her pregnant younger sister who bled to death 7 years earlier because they could not afford to take her to a hospital to deliver her baby. Where she used to harvest ten 50-kg bags of paddy every year on her one-hectare plot of land, she harvested thirty 50-kg bags in January 2024 and another thirty bags in August 2024. Selling 30 of these 60 bags from the 2 harvests at 60,000 per bag, Fatima used the 1.8 million Naira (~USD 1,100) she earned to put her adopted niece in school, send her elder son to the University and the younger one to senior secondary school (both in Minna), and to buy a second-hand rice milling machine and 5 sheep for rearing young.
She also contributed money to help her husband buy a motorcycle. Each of the 100 women recount similar stories: with better harvests from better agricultural inputs, they have been able to feed their families better, earn more money to enroll their children in school – or send them back to school, buy assets, expand the area cultivated – and improve their social status.
At an average of six members per family, these one hundred women were able to feed and support another five hundred indirect beneficiaries, buying other crops and vegetables to supplement what they had grown – and thus improving nutrition and food security for their families. Some women beneficiaries also reported joint investments: The women from the Kakakpangi community, for instance, bought ten hectares of farmland, and cows, sheep & goats for fattening, while those from the Edozhigi communities bought machines to mill rice and to grind cereals and cassava, and also opened a provision store.
In general, the increase in income enabled the women to expand their farming activities and agribusinesses, to pay their bills, afford hospital care for their families, support their husbands, and send their out-of-school children back to school. It has helped them make their own decisions and seek the guidance of their menfolk only when needed.