Raising incomes by 50% in Niger Delta

The Niger Delta is Nigeria’s second poorest region where the concentration of oil industries has created wage and commodities inflation, raising the cost of living and intensifying poverty among the poor. The high levels and intensity of poverty and inequality have fuelled militancy and eruptions of violence, further aggravating and perpetuating the incidence of poverty.

This programme seeks to address this challenge by applying an M4P approach to design and implement systemic and sustainable interventions. The market development (MADE) programme aims to help generate pro-poor and inclusive economic growth in the non-oil sectors of the nine Niger Delta states by raising the incomes of at least 150 000 people – 50% of whom are women – by 50%.

The role of Genesis has been to provide market systems development advisory services to the MADE technical team. In the design phase, this entailed conducting market systems analysis in the agricultural inputs value chain and overseeing analysis in the cassava, fisheries, household poultry, and palm oil value chains.

The analysis conducted underpinned the MADE business case, which once approved by DFID, ensured the programme’s transition to the implementation phase. In the Implementation phase, we continue to provide advisory services, ensuring success by contributing to the design, implementation and management of pro-poor, private sector led interventions.

With the support of the Genesis team, MADE’s private sector led interventions across the agricultural inputs, palm oil, fisheries (wild capture and aquaculture), cassava and household poultry value chains have reached 73% of the targeted Year 2 outreach of 35 434. There was also evidence of income gains being realised in value chains with short production cycles, such as aquaculture as well as crowding-in of additional private sector players.