Community-based Agriculture and Rural Development Programme
CBARDP
General Presentation
Nigeria covers 924,000 km2 inhabited by 125 million people composed of about 250 ethnic groups, with diverse languages and religious faiths. The largest ethnic groups are the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Igbo in the southeast and the Yoruba in the southwest. The federation currently comprises the Federal Capital Territory, 36 states and 774 local governments.
Declining basic indicators of poverty and experience from previous projects and field observations indicate that poverty in rural areas in the northern regions of Nigeria is becoming more widely entrenched. Traditional approaches to poverty alleviation through rural development, including projects focusing on a small area, cannot have a major impact on poverty as they: cannot mobilise sufficient external resources to assist a large target group; do not ensure a high proportion of funds reach the target groups; do not make use of existing government programmes and resources; and, have been set up outside government processes so that even successful models have difficulty continuing operating once project funding is finished.
To address this current decline, a new approach is required to mobilise and redirect existing resources at community, local and state government levels to improve the effectiveness of rural development in northern Nigeria. It is agaist this background that the community based agriculture and rural development using the community driven development approach was formulated. The Programme is desined for eight northern states of Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara in the northwest and Borno and Yobe in the northeast but implemented in seven states with Kano abstaining from taking the loan but adopting the approach.
Programme Objectives
The development goal is: ’to improve the livelihoods and living conditions of rural communities, with emphasis on women and other vulnerable groups, focusing on the eight northern states.’
This goal is pursued by using federal, state and local government, community and IFAD resources in at least 234 village areas across eight states to:
- empower poor rural women and men to critically analyse their constraints, opportunities and support requirements, and to increasingly effectively manage their own development;
- support institutionalisation of the policies and processes, create awareness and develop the capacity of public and private sector service providers to become more relevant and responsive to the rural poor women and men; and,
- support balanced sustainable social, agricultural and economic development interventions for appropriate village women’s and men’s groups and individuals. These are based on the guiding principles adopted during the Programme planning phase.
Components
The program has two main components :
Duration:
2003 – 2010
Amount:
29 900 000 USD
Address
Mr. Bukar TIJANI
National Programme Coordinator
Olusegun Obasanjo Drive,
GRA, P.M.B. 2168, Katsina, Nigeria
Tel : +234 65 433 971/08037012886
Fax : +234 65 433 972
Email : cbardp@email.com; bukartijani@yahoo.com