Africa-Press – Nigeria. Nigeria, alongside 11 other African countries will get over $5 billion investment, over the next five years from the World Bank, to help restore degraded landscapes, improve agriculture productivity, and promote livelihoods.
The World Bank Group President, David Malpass made this promise on Monday at the One Planet Summit, a high-level meeting co-hosted with France and the United Nations that is focused on addressing climate change and biodiversity loss.
Specifically the money, the bank said will fund interventions in restoring drylands, agriculture, water, community development, food security, resilient infrastructure, landscape restoration, and renewable energy.
Other countries to benefit from the funds include Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Sudan with focus on Sahel region, Lake Chad, and Horn of Africa, the Bank said in a statement.
On why the region, Mahel explained, “Sahel region, in particular, was one of the most vulnerable to desertification and land degradation, with temperature increases projected to be 1.5 times faster than the global average. Eighty percent of farmlands in the region was degraded and about 30 million people food insecure”
Last year, the World Research Institute (WRI) had warned that Nigeria was becoming increasing vulnerable to climate change challenges.
The institute in a report published on its Aqueduct platform, a data-set website that tracks the change in water supply, water demand across the world, revealed that in less than 10 years, the country moved up 37 places from a country with low chances of having challenges with water to a low medium water stress risk country. With Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Jigawa, and Kano, the top five contributing states.
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