The African Development Bank has invested $1.44 billion to support the development of energy and power, transport, water, and sanitation infrastructure in Nigeria.
The Bank’s Nigeria Country Department, Director General Lamin Barrow disclosed this at the Nasarawa Investment Summit 2024, held from 15 – 16 May in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital. The event was attended by local and foreign investors, representatives of the private sector, and senior government officials.

Acknowledging the resonance of the Summit theme against the backdrop of turbulence in the global economy, Barrow noted that Nasarawa State, and indeed Nigeria, face a huge infrastructure deficit, inhibiting the country’s efforts to diversify its non-oil production and achieve international competitiveness for exports.

According to the 2020 National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan, Nigeria requires, between 2020 and 2043, total infrastructure investments estimated at $2.3 trillion, to raise its infrastructure stock to the international benchmark of 70% of GDP. The energy sector alone will require $759 billion, while the transport sector needs $575 billion.

The African Union Commission (AUC) and Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, EUMETSAT, have signed an agreement to further strengthen cooperation on Earth observation.

The memorandum of understanding opens the way for access by African environmental and meteorological services to EUMETSAT’s data from its next-generation satellite systems. It provides the framework for EUMETSAT and AUC to cooperate on deploying new infrastructure to receive data and build educational materials to ensure the biggest possible impact from the satellite data.

EUMETSAT has begun to deploy its Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellite system, with the launch of MTG-Imager 1 in December 2022. The satellite’s imagers have a constant view of Africa, as well as Europe, and its data will be released for operational use soon. The organisation’s next-generation of polar-orbiting satellites, EUMESAT Polar System – Second Generation, will begin to be launched in 2025-26.

“EUMETSAT is a key partner of the African Union in projects aiming to strengthen Africa’s meteorological, environmental and climate services,” EUMETSAT Director-General Phil Evans said. “We have provided African nations with data and capacity building support for more than two decades, within the framework of the European Union-Africa Partnership.

On May 20, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) celebrated the successful completion of the READ II Activity, which has addressed the evolving educational needs of children in Ethiopia since 2018 for over $73 million. Education stakeholders, implementing partners, and key figures in the educational sector gathered to share experiences, knowledge, and lessons learned. Initially focused on Early Grade Reading, the program adapted to reach more than four million primary school students across the country. 

In response to the crisis arising from the conflict in Northern Ethiopia, the READ II Activity has played a pivotal role in supporting the reopening and operation of primary schools in conflict-affected areas of the Afar, Amhara, and Tigray regions. During its implementation of education recovery activities, READ II has successfully supported about 700,000 children to return to learning, built the capacity of caregivers to provide psychosocial support to traumatized students and established local support mechanisms to reduce school related gender-based violence. 

African communities increasingly face a complex set of challenges that require multisector, layered initiatives that support their efforts to reshape their environments, says ForAfrika, the largest African humanitarian development organisation.

The effects of climate change and war have led to unprecedented numbers of internally displaced people, many of whom are to be found in Africa, especially in the north and east where conflict has led to 9.7-million people fleeing their homes, 6-million in Sudan and 3.7-million in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“Over 40 years of operating as Africa’s largest humanitarian development organisation, we have developed a three-tiered programming framework that helps communities get back on their feet. Repeatedly we have seen it prove its worth,” says Dr Mary Okumu, the organisation’s technical director.

The ForAfrika approach supported Rosemary Anania’s journey from losing everything as she fled from unrest in South Sudan in 2017 to owning a small business in Uganda in 2021.