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OCTOBER 2015 NEWSLETTER
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NDLINK MONTHLY UPDATE

Connect. Collaborate. Coordinate.

Dear NDLinkers,
 
 
 
Photos from NDDF Asaba event on November 17-18, 2015.
 
We are always excited about November. November is the month we host our annual Niger Delta Development Forum NDDF in Nigeria. This year's forum was held in Asaba on 17-18 November. NDDF Asaba comes at a watershed moment in the Niger Delta - the region has seen shifts in leadership in five of the nine Niger Delta states, with more elections to follow in Bayelsa (the recently concluded on in December) and Rivers states. With this new crop of  leadership in the region, it provided an unprecedented opportunity to frame and influence the discourse, priorities and flagship initiatives in the region for the next four years. This year's Nigeria based NDDF follows two earlier editions of NDDF in London, UK in June 2015 and in Washington, DC in October 2015. The theme for this year's forum was 'Collaborative Efforts For Stimulating Investments and Inclusive Economic Growth in the Niger Delta' .

A snapshot of some of the speakers at NDDF Asaba: 
  • His Excellency Professor Yemi Osinbajo, VP of Federal Republic of Nigeria represented by Sir Dan Abia, MD, NDDC.
  • Michael T. Harvery, USAID/Nigeria Mission Director
  • His Excellency Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, Delta State Governor
  • Professor Patrick Utomi
  • Tammie Kammonke, Executive Director, Gender Perspectives
  • Ambassador Nkoyo Toyo, Special Advisor to Cross Rivers Governor
  • Clement Ofuani, Director General, Delta State Capital Territory Development Agency
  • Senator Emmanuel Aguariavwodo, SA to Delta State Governor on Infrastructure and Housing, Delta state

Key takeaways and highlights from each of the sessions:-

1. Funding and investment opportunities for economic infrastructure and diversification
  • The enabling environment has been a tricky thing to get right in the Niger Delta. Nigeria has had a long history of infrastructure projects that have never been finished, where people have opportunistically gotten contracts that they have never completed.
  • Develop clearer plans for alternatives for the import and distribution of goods away from Lagos through investment to make port areas more responsive to the needs of the new poles of growth. These could include moving goods through secondary ports (such was Port Harcourt, Warri, Calabar), which are less expensive, but ensuring that there is adequate infrastructure to use them. One incentive to shippers could be to reduce costs by lowering the port tariffs for ports in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Calabar.
  • Nigeria currently ranks 169 out of 189 countries on the Ease of Doing Business rankings, with Niger Delta states performing poorly when compared to the rest of Nigeria. Niger Delta state governments should prioritize working on the indicators for doing business collectively to make region more attractive to foreign and local investors.
2. Skills development for youths and women as a priority for the region for the next four years
  • ICT has the potential to drive economic growth in the region. Youth need to find innovative ways of applying technology to help solve problems in their local communities. For example, in Kenya text messages are used to send information on weather conditions and market opportunities to farmers.
  • In order to build entrepreneurship mentality in children, it needs to start with teachers. Teachers themselves do not have this entrepreneurship mentality and may discourage children from building up this attitude.
  • Capacity building for women in businesses should be addressed at all levels; creation of enabling environment with appropriate policy and legal frameworks, institutional development including community participation and involvement, and human resources development and strengthening managerial system.
  • Women skill development is everyone's responsibility; men, women, youths.
3. Strengthening agriculture market value chains
  • Agriculture value chain project/activity has to be market driven - starting from the market.
  • We cannot expand agriculture value chain if our focus is only on food market. We need to create markets for every single agricultural commodity we have in Nigeria. For example, we do not have a textile industry in Nigeria hence we cannot drive the cotton value chain.
  • Nigeria does not have a policy and an institution regulatory body that guides international investment in agriculture. Similarly, Nigeria does not have an institution that helps in exportation of agricultural products. Creating such institutions as well as addressing logistical problems through provision of railway systems and sea ports can promote exportation of agricultural products outside the country.
  • All the value chain actors need to upgrade, upscale and expand their agricultural production in order to meet both the local and international market demand.
4. Governance and accountability
  • When it comes to articulating a collective agenda for the region, it should include stringent economic planning and a need for evidence based planning (best practices, accountability, leadership, etc.).
  • Economic growth in the region is restricted by not only a paucity of information and market research, but also a lack of analysis and validation of information, whether public or private. As such greater understanding is needed of the ways that information can be used to properly stimulate investment and build competitiveness.
  • Rent-seeking has come to dominate the economy of the Niger Delta through political patronage, extortion and illegal and industrial-scale oil bunkering. The consequences of trying to live on these forms of rent-seeking include lawlessness, increased income inequality, insecurity and economic disaster for legitimate businesses. As this type of illicit behaviour is a fundamentally domestic circumstance, the region’s governments need to be proactive in driving major behavioural change and change of expectations.

 

The official Forum website is our dedicated space for publishing and sharing key communication materials that come out of each Forum. These include lead paper presentations, short video clips from the event, photos, and other social media materials like Storifies which are short summaries of the event as it happened live. An immediate follow up action from NDDF Asaba was a Twitter chat on Monday, December 7th on #power and #electricity using the hashtag #electricityng. Our guest for that chat was Dolapo Oni (@dolarpo), Head of Energy Research at EcoBank. To find out more about that twitter chat, you can check it here.

 
    
Member Spotlight for November - Blessing Timidi Digha 


Blessing Timidi Digha volunteers her time as the Community Mobilization and Advocacy Officer at Girl Child Development and Support Initiative, a non-governmental, not for profit organization that advocates and work towards the advancement and development of the Nigerian Girl Child.

Her foray into activism began actively during her stint with teenage pregnancy where her eyes were opened to the plights girl children faced when it comes to Sexuality Education, Teenage Pregnancy and Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights. She has dedicated ten years of her life working on issues and interventions as it relates to the girl child, particularly in the Nigerian and African context, and with much bias to Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights, Feminism and Gender Equality.

Click here to read more about Timidi 

Improving Access to Clean Water: Uduak Affia’s story

PIND trained Uduak Affia’s Lazarus Care Mission International organization in July. She has since led her team to establish a bio-sand filter production facility in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, established links with UNICEF’s WASH team in Akwa Ibom State and is actively promoting the biosand filter in Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Cross River States. Learn more about how she’s making an impact in water access in the Niger Delta. 
 
     Dr. Affia in pink top during the biosand filter training in PINDs PH office


JOBS! JOBS! JOBS! For more jobs, visit NDLink's jobs site today. Remember we post jobs every Monday and Wednesday and deadlines for applications for most jobs closes prior to our newsletter publication. Make it a habit to check in regularly if you are actively job hunting.


 
  • Now more than ever, solving the world’s most pressing problems requires the kind of systems-level change that can only be addressed by collective action. Consider the ambitious post-2015 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) areas, such as food security, climate change, and universal education, whose challenges can hardly be addressed by a single government or donor alone. This publication titled Making Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives work  highlights some promising examples of success, and leads us to believe that MSIs – in the right context, and set up well – can play an essential role in helping achieve results at greater scale for a broad cross-section of stakeholders. 
  • Chevron has remained committed to its longstanding and strategic investment in the Niger Delta, which has spanned over 50 years. Over the past five years, building on lessons and experiences in Nigeria and elsewhere around the world, the company has developed new partnerships and innovative approaches to achieve greater alignment and systemic impact in its efforts to support locally-driven peace building and economic progress. Download this report on Chevron – Supporting Peace Building as a cornerstone for economic growth
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