The World Bank has approved a $500 million loan for Nigeria to address flooding, restore degraded land and help reduce conflict in the country’s 19 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The financing is aimed at supporting a range of interventions, including the construction and rehabilitation of flood‑control infrastructure, the rehabilitation of riverbanks, and the implementation of early‑warning systems to protect vulnerable communities.
In addition to flood mitigation, the loan will fund projects to restore soils and vegetation that have been degraded by repeated inundation, erosion and unsustainable land use, thereby improving agricultural productivity and livelihoods.
The World Bank’s assistance also seeks to curb the social tensions that can arise from competition over scarce resources after flood events, a recurring challenge in the northern regions of the country.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has experienced increasingly severe flood events in recent years, prompting both national and international actors to prioritize climate‑resilience and disaster‑risk reduction measures.
<small>Source: Punch Nigeria — read the original story there.</small>
