Latest reports suggest that the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has approved a $50 million loan for the Yobe State Environmental and Climate Change Action Project (ECCAP).
It is expected that the loan will enhance climate change resilience, boost food security and improve livelihoods for over 3.5 million people in northeast Nigeria.
In a statement, AFDB noted that the project cost was estimated at $101.34 million with the AfDB providing a $50 million loan while the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) was expected to provide $30 million in co-financing.
Speaking during the Board of Directors’ approval of the project, Akinwumi Adesina, AfDB President said that the project would help tackle general insecurity, climate vulnerability, food insecurity and build resilient livelihoods.
“This is a very practical and granular project that tackles the issues of insecurity, more generally vulnerability, but also food security, and restoration of the degraded environment. It is all about how we build resilient livelihoods. This is a project that shows how we can do that in an integrated way,” he added.
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Reacting, Lamin Barrow, the Director General of the Bank’s Nigeria Country Department, said that with the key interventions in afforestation and reforestation contributing to carbon sequestration, the green project will help reduce vulnerability to climate shocks, build the resilience of the target population and boost Nigeria’s efforts to meet its African Forestry Landscape Restoration Initiative goal to restore 4 million hectares of land degraded by climate change, a regional and global public good, and Sustainable Development Goals 13 and 15 targets.”
On his part, the Director of the Bank’s Agriculture and Agro-Industry Department, Martin Fregene, said that the ECCAP project is not a typical livelihood support project; it seeks to fill a gap to ensure sustainability in livelihood-enhancing projects.
“The project will lead to the improvement of the vegetative cover of the state with more than 20 million established trees over 120,000 hectares and will train selected youth and women to set up 3,560 new MSMEs that will process and market new products using raw materials from trees, such as neem oil, and introduce improved clean cooking stoves and clean cooking technologies targeting 10 percent of the population,”he said.
Story was adapted from Thisday.
