3 September 2012: Niger has been awarded US$22 million in financing from the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), in addition to financial and technical resources from the African Development Bank (AfDB), to support the Niger Water Resources Mobilization and Development Project, as well as provide assistance to scale-up best practices within a number of other water resource management projects in Niger.

The Niger Water Resources Mobilization and Development Project seeks to assist in increasing food production in ten rural districts through the construction of, inter alia, mini dams, boreholes, irrigation schemes and erosion control, as part of their water resource management efforts. Social infrastructure, capacity building and training, as well as climate-resilient seeds will also be provided to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project. Additional activities also include establishing partnerships with other local water resource management programmes and ensuring that best practices from these projects and partnerships are scaled-up.

The financing was awarded to Niger as part of the Strategic Program for Climate Resilience for Niger under CIF’s Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR). Through these projects, Niger is expected to become more resilient to climate change, which has been stipulated as a national goal as well as a goal under the PPCR.

The World Bank is the overall coordinator of the CIF partnership. [AfDB Press Release] [CIF Decision]