UK lays out support to make Nigeria’s agricultural sector more climate resilient

LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) – British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly will present a new support package to make Nigeria’s agricultural sector more climate resilient during a visit to the African country this week, his office said on Tuesday.

The support includes a £55 million contract to help transform Nigeria’s rural economy and a £2.9 million grant to support more than 4 million people in adopting and scaling up sustainable farming practices, said the government.

“Together we are focusing on the future by implementing green and clean measures, both in agriculture and in infrastructure development, to create climate-resilient solutions to the global challenges we all face today and will increasingly face in the years to come,” he said. Cleverly. in a sentence.

Most people in Africa’s most populous nation live in rural areas and are on the brink of climate change, especially droughts and floods, wreaking havoc on their livelihoods.

The new funding would boost productivity and resilience in the West African country’s agricultural sector to the impacts of climate change and help develop heat- and flood-tolerant crops and increase soil fertility, the British government added.

Cleverly, who will visit Nigeria’s commercial hub Lagos on Tuesday and its capital Abuja on Wednesday, will also announce a £10m facility to provide funding for climate-friendly infrastructure projects, according to the statement.

More than 600 people were killed and at least one million displaced in Nigeria last year after the worst floods in a decade.

Floods swept away crops, exacerbating a food crisis in a nation where millions of people have fallen into food poverty in the past three years, according to international aid groups.

Reporting by Muvija M in London and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Lagos Editing by Matthew Lewis

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