UK Launches Climate Change Programme targeting Nigerians

UK’s Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, has officially announced the launch of its programme, Propcom+ supporting climate and growth by addressing environmental, social, and economic challenges in the country’s food and land-use system.

The new Propcom+ programme reinforces the UK Government’s commitment to “working with the Government of Nigeria to increase the depth of investment in the agricultural sector, this time, helping the vulnerable to build resilience and adapt to the effects of climate change.”

A £55 million contract and £2.89m grant was announced as part of the £95m Propcom+ eight-year UK International Climate Finance programme aimed at supporting climate-resilient and sustainable agriculture and forestry that benefits people, climate, and nature.

The programme aims to support more than four million people, 50 per cent of whom will be women, to adopt and scale sustainable agricultural practices that increase productivity and climate resilience while reducing emissions and protecting natural ecosystems.

Propcom+ builds on the UK Government’s investment in agriculture through the Propcom Mai-karfi programme, which ended in March 2022 after supporting over 1.25 million persons with improved incomes through key market reforms and policies that benefited poor women and men in Northern Nigeria.

UK Foreign Secretary James also highlighted how UK Support will be helping to unlock $210 million of financing from the African Development Bank, AFDB, for participating Nigerian states so as to aid the development of critical infrastructure and related activities under the Special Agro-industrial Processing Zones, SAPZ, programme.

Speaking after the event, British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Richard Montgomery said: “Tackling the effects of climate change and lowering emissions is a key priority for the UK government and we remain committed to building sustainable pro-poor climate-resilient growth in Nigeria through the new Propcom+ programme which will address environmental, social and economic challenges in the country’s food and land-use systems.”

“It will do this by working through strategic market actors to increase productivity of smallholder farmers, improve nutrition and food security, enhance climate resilience, pursue lower emissions, and protect and restore nature, while also tackling some of Nigeria’s underlying drivers of conflict and insecurity.”

The Palladium Group implements the new programme, which kicked off in May 2023. The programme has initial focal states in Kano, Jigawa, Kaduna, Edo, and Cross River, where it will deliver climate-smart agricultural interventions to help the poor and climate vulnerable. It will also work in some Southern Nigerian states to address issues around deforestation, to foster sustainable land-use management.

Propcom+’s Political Director and Country Representative, Adiya V. Ode said: “Propcom+ will work as a market facilitator to identify constraints in market systems and will implement interventions through three broad-based inter-linked pillars. Pillar one will scale-up a focused basket of proven climate-smart interventions around agriculture and primary processing/storage practices/models for adoption by millions of poor and vulnerable smallholder farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs using a market systems approach.

“Pillar two will build, pilot and scale new business models that improve productivity, enhance resilience to climate change, reduce emission and improve nutrition outcomes and Pillar three will seek to support a strengthened enabling environment for sustainable food and land-use systems through enabling policies.”

Guardian/Shakirat Sadiq