How $500m ‘Nigeria for Women Project’ will boost fish export – Minister

The Minister for Women Affairs, Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, projected on Monday that the ‘Nigeria for Women Project’ would contribute to making Nigeria one of the highest fish exporters in the world.

She expressed her commitment towards the project’s success, vowing to ensure that her ministry uses its $500 million fund strictly for its programmes.

“This money is called ‘Nigeria for Women Project’, and that is exactly and only what it will be used for. Any other thing will be totally unacceptable by women, and as far as President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had signed a memo to that effect, I don’t see anywhere any human being who can change it,” she said on Arise Television’s Morning Show on Monday.

The minister, who expressed worry that only 10 per cent of women own properties in Nigeria, said she was determined to make the programme achieve its intended goals.

The minister said the women’s empowerment scheme focuses on, among other businesses, including fish farming.

She said, “We are targeting from now till February next year to give Nigerians 15 million tons of fish”.

She further explained that Nigerians would consume two million tons while the remaining would be exported.

“So that we can be able to export 13 million tons of fish. That will make us one of the highest in export of fish,” she said.

She said she had written to the Minister of Water Resources to help provide a dam in Anambra State for fish farming to achieve this goal.

She also said modernised farming tools would be purchased and given to targeted women to support their livelihoods.

‘Nigeria for Women Project’

In June 2023, shortly after the President Tinubu administration came on board, the World Bank announced its approval of $500 million for the Nigeria for Women Project, referred to in full as Nigeria for Women Program Scale Up (NFWP-SU).

According to the World Bank, the scale-up financing would help support the Nigerian government “to invest in improving the livelihoods of women in Nigeria”.

“The NFWP-SU will help to ensure better economic opportunities for women, which is essential for addressing gender inequality; guaranteeing better education, health, and nutrition outcomes for families; and building women’s and communities’ resilience to climate change,” the World Bank statement added.

A product of the partnership between the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the Federal Ministry of Ministry of Affairs, the first phase of this project will run for five years.

It was initially designed to start in six pilot states – Abia, Akwa Ibom, Kebbi, Niger, Ogun and Taraba – representing each of the six geopolitical zones of the country.

But Ms Kennedy-Ohanenye said on Monday that it is now simultaneously in place across Nigeria’s 36 states and Abuja, the federal capital.

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Update

Giving an update on the programme, she said women who are vulnerable and genuinely in need of empowerment from local communities were already onboarding women.

She also said the ministry was partnering traditional rulers, who, she said, were helping to create opportunities for dialogue to ease penetrating local communities.

On her watch, the minister said the ministry had moved away from the past administrations’ tradition of spending the lion’s share of available funds on “advocacies, meetings, consultancies”.