Preface
igeria is aggressively implementing rural development programs aimed at significantly reducing poverty. The objective of the country’s development strategy, the 20:2020 Vision, for example, is to make Nigeria one of the 20 largest economies in the world by the year 2020. These efforts have produced promising results in the past ten years, when the gross domestic product (GDP) grew by an annual average of 7 percent—more than double the 2.6–3.0 percent growth rate the country achieved from 1990 to 1999. The agricultural sector contributed about 47 percent of the GDP growth between 1990 and 2007, the largest contribution from a single sector. Despite this impressive growth, however, poverty in Nigeria remains entrenched. An estimated 54 percent of the Nigerian population lives below the poverty line, suggesting that the majority of the poor are being bypassed by these impressive achievements. What must policymakers do to target the poor? Government initiatives such as the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies (NEEDS and NEEDS II) are currently being designed to empower the poor and vulnerable to escape from poverty and to participate in designing new publicly funded development programs. The Fadama II project was one such program intended to target and empower the poor. Consistent with NEEDS and other poverty-reduction programs, Fadama II followed the community-driven development (CDD) model of empowering communities to plan and implement publicly funded projects. Fadama II has produced impres- sive outcomes that have helped Nigerian policymakers and development part- ners to implement poverty-reduction programs. Of particular interest to the Nigerian government is Fadama II’s success in targeting the poor. This success provides a lesson not only for Nigeria, but also for other countries designing similar programs.
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In recognition of Fadama II’s impressive achievement, the project received the 2008 World Bank Africa Award for excellence. The government of Nigeria and the World Bank have also taken the bold step of scaling up this impres- sive achievement to span the entire country. This decision was influenced by Fadama II’s success and the government’s desire to target the poor. Since many programs attempt to reduce poverty in Nigeria, IFPRI used an innovative approach to identify those observed outcomes attributable to Fadama II. The study offers insights into Fadama II’s impacts and how the
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