This project helps farmers adopt climate-smart practices to improve crop production. It addresses key challenges facing Nigeria’s agriculture sector, including climate change, underinvestment, overexploitation and security threats. Currently, meeting food demand relies heavily on agricultural expansion, which fuels desertification. To break this cycle, our project focuses on water and soil conservation, efficient farm management, and value chain development, that will increase productivity, improve livelihoods, and protect the environment.

In regions of northern Nigeria, water scarcity limits agricultural growth and food security. Our project bridges this gap by developing climate-resilient water management systems. We are upgrading infrastructure, including small dams, boreholes, and irrigation networks to ensure reliable access to clean water. This empowers farmers to produce crops year-round, enhancing food security and livelihoods. By integrating flood control measures and community-led initiatives, we’re protecting communities, preserving ecosystems, and fostering resilience. With improved water access, local communities thrive, adapting to climate change and securing a sustainable future.

With an estimated 70% of dry land challenges found at the grassroot level, availability of reliable sustainable environment management information is critical, hence the communities need the right information, at the right time to enable them foster positive environmental behaviours individually and collectively. Through various media platforms and community engagements, ACReSAL provides risk information to the targeted communities to strengthen their capacities and role towards sustainable environments and development

ACReSAL seeks to improve the lives of 3.4 million direct beneficiaries in northern Nigeria, reducing poverty and vulnerability. Through our Community Revolving Fund (CRF) and other initiatives, we are supporting agricultural production, processing, and marketing, lifting millions out of poverty and fostering economic resilience.

In northern Nigeria, competition over scarce natural resources fuels farmer-herder conflicts, exacerbated by insurgency, communal clashes, traditional title disputes, and water crises. These tensions drive migration and underdevelopment. ACReSAL addresses this challenge by building capacity for peaceful conflict resolution, establishing inclusive peace architectural platforms, mediating disputes through the Common Ground Approach (CGA), and promoting sustainable environment and development. By fostering collaborative relationships and resolving conflicts, ACReSAL ensures a harmonious and thriving region.

The project will also support special ecosystems like National Park Services, in managing protected areas, including Yankari Game Reserve, Jos Wildlife Park, Gombe State Department of Forestry. By revitalizing these ecosystems, we safeguard essential services like water filtration, flood control, and habitat preservation, benefiting local communities and the environment.

ACReSAL recognizes the critical role of robust institutions in addressing climate change and promoting sustainable development. To ensure long-term project impact, we are supporting policy development and review on climate change, climate smart agriculture, environmental management, and sustainable land use. Institutions will be enhanced with infrastructure, technology, and training to foster community participation in natural resource management. Expected outcomes include improved institutional capacity for climate resilience, an enhanced policy framework for sustainable land and water use, increased community engagement, and sustainable project benefits for future generations. By strengthening institutions, ACReSAL fosters resilience, addresses climate change, and promotes sustainable development in northern Nigeria.

This project provides support to farmers at the household level to optimize climate-smart rainfed agriculture practices, particularly relating to crops. Investments could include water and soil conservation, optimizing farm management (improved crop varieties, Integrated Pest Management; soil and water testing technologies), controlling invasive species, and supporting value chains. Climate change risks include rainfall variability, droughts, floods and increase of average temperature, making rainfed agriculture more vulnerable.

There is significant opportunity to unlock the potential of enhanced rainfed agriculture, thus building climate resilience and moving farmers beyond subsistence farming towards sustainable community level investments specific climate smart rainfed agriculture for farmer/producer groups. Crops cover much of the landscape in the project area (57%) and provide the main source of food and livelihoods.

 Yet, crop productivity has been declining due to a series of factors, including underinvestment, overexploitation, a changing climate, and security threats. Agricultural area expansion and imports are the primary means to meeting increasing food demand; yet agricultural expansion is a driver of desertification, which in turn reduces agricultural productivity, generating a vicious circle of overexploitation. 

To break this cycle, the project will invest in water and soil conservation, optimizing farm management (improved crop varieties, Integrated Pest Management; soil and water testing technologies), value chain development, and small equipment to increase labor efficiency.

Community revolving funds (CRFs) present higher potential for sustainability and scaling-up. CRF implemented in World Bank-supported projects at scale, especially in East Africa, to support investments by community-based groups, including farmer groups in micro watersheds. The CRF would be a community level fund to support ACReSAL-supported and registered community/farmer groups to undertake investments for climate-smart rainfed crops interventions.  

The registered community/farmer groups will prepare investment/business plans and apply for loans from the CRF. The investment/business plans will be appraised and approved by the local government. The CRF would support ACReSAL registered community/farmer groups in approximately 2800 communities in target watersheds. 

To ensure that the CRF is impactful and meets the needs of women, implementation components of the CRF may be piloted under an impact evaluation before potential scale-up within the project. 

ACReSAL will kick-start the implementation of CRF in 5-10 pilot states and it will be gradually scaled-up to other states.

Desertification exacerbates declining agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and poverty challenges in northern Nigeria. Desertification results in soil erosion, loss of soil nutrients, and low retention of soil water, which slows down plant growth and leads to a decline in the productivity of agricultural lands. Desertification is the process of degradation of drylands, such that they become progressively less suitable to support human populations. Specifically, it is defined by the UNCDD as “the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas. It is a gradual process of soil productivity loss and the thinning out of the vegetative cover because of human activities and climatic variations, such as prolonged droughts and floods.” Other characteristics include a rise in the reflective capacity (albedo) of the surface for solar radiation, a considerable and permanent loss of perennial plants, especially woody shrubs and trees, increased soil erosion and impoverishment by wind, gully, and sheet erosion of soils by occasional heavy rainfalls.

The Government of Nigeria has established several initiatives in the agricultural sector to combat desertification including afforestation and reforestation programs, dissemination of proven agricultural technologies and sustainable agricultural practices, implementing water management projects such as dams to give sufficient water for users, including livestock, and promotion of efficient energy sources. 

Several efforts to stop and reverse desertification are complicated by the need to feed a rapidly increasing population in a region where natural resources are dwindling, and over 90 percent of national food production depends on smallholder farmers who lack the capacity to increase food production without degrading land. The two main causes of desertification and drought are direct human activities and physical factors such as climate change. 

Although, many of these efforts initiated by the Government have yielded significant results, and several under the Great Green Wall Sahel-wide initiative of the African Union, there is still a need to create a large scale sustainable natural resources management initiative to address land degradation which has led to drought, desertification, drought and scale-up cost-effective land restoration practices. Thus, the Federal Government of Nigeria has now requested the assistance of the World Bank in addressing this problem of desertification and drought in northern Nigeria. 

In light of the foregoing, the Federal Government of Nigeria has, with the support of the World Bank, commenced the implementation of a large-scale investment operation, the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL). This multi-sector project aims to help develop a more integrated, spatial approach to build community resilience as well as improve the sustainable productivity of its natural resources. 

The national commitment is evidenced by Nigeria’s intention to restore 4 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 as part of the AFR100 Initiative and the Bonn Challenge. To that effect, a target of 1 million hectares has been set as target for restoration at the end of the ACReSAL project in 2028. This will assist in minimizing the ugly incidences of herders-farmers conflicts. ACReSAL interventions will improve land use planning and help a wide range of communities adapt to evolving dryland conditions with an end target of 3.4 million direct project beneficiaries

North and central Nigeria are rich in shallow groundwater resources, with about 7 million ha of cropland with groundwater resources within a depth of 25 m. The project will support farmers at the household level to increase irrigation, including small-scale solar-powered irrigation. 

FLID initiatives are demand-driven, where farmers are provided with information and practical avenues to access the equipment that they need from private sector suppliers. Interventions include knowledge transfer about technology, affordable finance, and linkages to markets. Farmers are encouraged to take up opportunities based on commercial farming with strong private sector involvement (equipment suppliers, financing institutions and market off takers). 

Individual irrigation has been promoted in many Government programs, the most well-known being the three FADAMA programs that achieved significant successes. Promoting FLID is one focus of the ACReSAL project because there are substantial natural resources that can be accessed, particularly shallow groundwater, and there is real potential to make a good farming profit from irrigated agriculture especially when using renewable energy resources such as solar.

Forest areas have critical functions in dryland management strategies for maintaining ecosystem integrity, supporting livelihoods, and slowing desertification.

 Charcoal production is an economically important sector, but in Nigeria it is considered as one of the major drivers of deforestation (particularly in Bauchi, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Taraba, Ogun, Oyo, Kogi States). Forest Management and Conservation (State and local forests), gazetted forest reserves are under the responsibility of state and local governments. 

The project will support the government’s efforts to improve the management and conservation of forests, increase presence of personnel, offices, transportation, communication, management plans, etc. Improved access to fuelwood will be provided by supporting plantations with fast-growing species and to strengthen non-timber forest product value chains for forest-dependent communities. To address challenges identified in the forestry sector, the project will set up a combination of incentive-based agroforestry schemes, agricultural intensification, bush fire control, establishment of fuelwood plantations on degraded gazetted forest lands or in other communal land. 

This subcomponent will also support national parks which are considered to be particularly at risk, and which form major parts of the prioritized watersheds under the project.

Using an approach pioneered by FAO in both northern Nigeria and other dryland areas in western Africa, using the Delfino plough which mimics the traditional half-moon water harvesting technique. It is composed of hybrid agroforestry models on communal lands which include plant species chosen by the communities, which produce non-timber forestry products, such as: fodder, acacia (gum Arabic), balanites, bee-keeping, nuts, mushrooms, and mixed planting with grains such as millet and sorghum. Improved pasture and rangeland management and restoration could also be included. Prioritized community infrastructure investments can also be supported. In community-selected degraded areas, the project will scale-up a restoration approach pioneered by FAO. The investment activities for community-led landscape restoration for the ACRESAL Project are: Provision of Delfino ploughs, tractors and other equipment. Access to agricultural inputs, sowing, planting, maintenances. Value chain investments (examples: hay, acacia, balanite) → Storage facilities → Support for processing enterprises. Establishing community nurseries for selected agroforestry species. Extension services to support community led landscape restoration activities. Procurement of motorbikes, vehicles and provision of technical assistance (support field activities)

There are over 200 traditional oases in northern Nigeria distributed as follows: Yunusari, Yobe (60 oases), Yusufari Karasuwa, Yobe (61 oases), Sokoto/Kebbi (26 oases), Jigawa (60 oases). 51 Oases are the cradle of cultivars adapted to local conditions and constitute a natural heritage of plants for multiple uses including fodder, condiments, and medicinal and aromatic plants. Over-exploitation, climate change, and the absence of community-based water and land management systems have resulted in the rapid degradation of critical oases. This has had multiple adverse impacts, such as: (a) degradation of ecosystem services, including nutrient cycling, decomposition and soil respiration, water and soil conservation, together with the reduction of biomass for carbon sequestration and gas regulation; (b) loss of unique breeds (or varieties) and their associated diversity, particularly pollinators and soil organisms adapted to local conditions; (c) collapse of a resilient food production base for local and global communities; and (d) out-migration and the resulting conflicts between competing users of over-exploited natural resource bases. The ACReSAL project will focus resources on some of the most vulnerable oases.

According to Government geological data, there has been a 400 percent increase in sand dunes over the last twenty years. In some cases, these sand dunes cover entire villages, impacting agricultural lands leading to a decline in agricultural outputs and livestock production as well as severe socio-economic impacts (such as loss of livelihood and migration). It has been reported that sand dunes have encroached on 30,000 hectares of land in parts of Yobe State. ACReSAL will target resources to the stabilization of sand dunes. The control of sand dune migration will also stabilize the soil, restore the vegetative cover, improve micro-climates and build resilience of affected communities. Improved vegetative cover will improve carbon sequestration and mitigate climate change. Climate change have amplified the frequency and severity of drifting sand dunes and its effect on many communities in the extreme northern fringes of the country. The control of sand dunes by the project will restore vegetation cover, reverse land degradation and restore soil productivity. These will build resilience of the affected communities to climate change and reduce out-migration. The vegetation cover and stabilized soil will facilitate carbon sequestration. Similarly, the fire control investments and activities under this activity will also reduce GHG emission.

The project will invest in water resources management activities, such as, construction of new and/ or rehabilitation of existing small dams/ reservoirs; rehabilitation, replacement and/or decommissioning of deep boreholes; rehabilitation and construction of associated hydraulic infrastructure (including, borehole heads, pumps and meters); and development and/or improvements of irrigation and drainage networks to make water safe and clean water available for irrigation and domestic purposes. Water is a limiting factor to agricultural productivity and food security because the rainy season lasts 3 to 4 months only in most parts of the north. Irrigation will enable farmers to cultivate their lands all year round which will make them nutritionally and economically resilient to climate change. While making water available, this project will also ensure this is done in a safe manner. Therefore, flood and sedimentation control structures such as check dams, levees, retaining walls, embankments, culverts, bridges, concrete channels, grouted riprap, and stream bed rehabilitation, among others would be provided to prevent and mitigate the impacts of floods. The project will also support sensitization, mobilization and organization of communities to manage erosion, control flooding and prevent disasters. These activities will ultimately build resilience of systems and people to climate change.

For wetland restoration, targeted investments will be carried out in selected wetlands to restore their ecological functions. 

Investments will include wetland inventories, definition of buffer protection areas, zoning, banks restoration, monitoring systems, water management, biodiversity conservation, invasive species control, jobs and community microprojects, management, overfishing management, climate change adaption action plans, education campaigns.