Nigeria

Development of the financial sector is a priority area for German development cooperation in Nigeria and KfW Development Bank is active with a number of projects in this domain.

For example, KfW and the Nigerian government have established the Fund for Agricultural Finance in Nigeria (FAFIN) which makes funds for investments available to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the agricultural sector. The recipients include producers of seeds and fertilizer as well as operators of warehouses or cassava, rice and tea processors. The fund pursues the aim of being economically sustainable and thus also attracting private capital.

KfW is also involved in two microfinance institutions that provide micro-companies with very small loans and grant credit for the promotion of SMEs. To ensure developmentally sound business policy, KfW has seats on the supervisory boards of both institutions. And successfully: Both Advans Lafayette Bank and AB Microfinance Bank have passed their break-even point. Each of their credit portfolios is growing and the proportion of defaulters is low. As they treat their customers fairly and transparently, growing confidence also means a constantly increasing customer base.

Another KfW project is the Clean Cooking Fund, intended to enable low-income households to use clean fuels such as gas for cooking. This is brought about by loans to households or companies.

Until 2015 Nigeria was one of the last three countries beside Afghanistan and Pakistan in which polio occurred regularly. However, in September 2015 Nigeria was deleted from the list of polio-endemic countries; it is now a high risk country. In 1988 the global community made a commitment to eradicate polio worldwide. In order to free the last countries of the infection, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). KfW Development Bank has supported this programme in Nigeria since 2003. The goal is to vaccinate all children under five in order to protect them from the polio virus, including in the northern regions of Nigeria.

Terror groups create fear and panic in Northern Nigeria. Fundamentalist Islamic groupings also pose a threat to doctors and those administering the vaccinations; some already paid with their lives for their engagement. In this context, KfW is promoting the national Polio Emergency Programme, which builds on a "hit and run" strategy. Vaccination campaigns are not announced until just before they start, and they end very quickly. A situation-specific security concept protects the health aid workers during their deployments in the hazardous regions.

At the same time, the programme contributes to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals/MDG), specifically MDG4, the improvement of children’s health.

Project example - Health  (PDF, 155 KB, non-accessible)