CARE International's long-term work in Niger

29 July 2005

Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world, its infant and maternal mortality rates among the highest in Africa.

On a daily basis, the majority of people living in Niger face food insecurity, disease, illiteracy, weak institutional support and limited means to participate in government. Niger is one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries; but paradoxically, it has one of the highest birth rates in the world, straining already limited agricultural resources and food supplies.

CARE International has been working in Niger since 1974 and has set in motion more than 50 projects. CARE International’s programmes focus on livelihood security, strengthening civil society organization, governance, gender, health, HIV/AIDS and micro-finance. CARE Niger has solid experience in conflict resolution and community mobilization around water, food security and natural resources management.

CARE International’s vision in Niger is to create a new spirit of development, working in partnership with families and communities. CARE International is currently conducting 15 projects in all seven regions (Tillaberi, Dosso, Tahoua, Agadez, Maradi, Diffa and Zinder) of the country and focuses on protecting households’ assets to increase their capacities to face shocks and food insecurity. There is also a focus on gender and diversity, developing partnerships with other groups, such as community business organisations and charities, and preparing to respond to emergencies.

CURRENT PROJECTS

HIV/AIDS

AIDS and Migration (SIDA en Exode)
The AIDS and Migration Project’s goal is to reduce the contribution of migration to the spread of HIV infection. It focuses on rural communities in Tahoua region where the majority of the able bodied men migrate annually for work. The project has activities both in Niger and Abidjan. It works in communities situated along the main migratory route between Tahoua and Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire. The project works with high-risk groups, including the wives of migrants who remain in their home villages, commercial sex workers and the predominantly young male migrants. Key activities address providing education and information services to encourage behaviour changes, greater access to condoms, enhancing the capacity to diagnose and treat sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and provide social support for high-risk groups. Project activities are designed to improve community support and individual self-awareness. In four villages, the project also works in close collaboration with the health services on the transmission from mother to child.

SIDA Burdin’a
The SIDA Burdin'a (roughly translated as AIDS and people in movement) is based in Diffa region in the far east of Niger. A total of 32 villages or groups of people, such as pastoralists, are targeted. Working in collaboration with local organizations, associations and community-based groups, CARE helps communities identify the main risks of AIDS and impacts on the community. Together the communities learn to develop solutions to reduce the risk of AIDS, identify strategies that communities can develop to reduce the impact of AIDS on their livelihood security and to care for those with AIDS. The project targets the main market areas and outlying communities. A particular emphasis is placed on the nomadic pastoralist population, which moves seasonally within the region and into neighboring countries.

AIDS Prevention - Phase III (Prévention du SIDA)
The project goal is to reduce the contribution of migration to the spread of HIV infection. Due to seasonal patterns of migration from rural areas to urban centers, often on the West African coast, migrants are among the most vulnerable to infection and are often the main means of transmission in Niger. CARE has been involved with combating the spread of AIDS in Niger since 1993, and this project builds on work that CARE did in the AIDS and Migration project/SIDA en Exode which provided information about AIDS and made progress in changing attitudes that contribute to transmitting HIV. This project targets communities situated along the main migratory route between Tahoua (the area that provide the largest number of Niger’s migrants) and Abidjan (their main destination). CARE works with high-risk groups, including the wives of migrants who remain in their home villages, commercial sex workers and the predominantly young male migrants. Key activities include education and information services, greater access to condoms, enhanced capacity to diagnose and treat sexually transmitted infections, and social support for high-risk groups.
Basic and Girls’ Education

Children of the Desert – Linking Education and Democracy Project
This project emerged after communities shared their thoughts with each other during CARE’s 1997 household livelihood security assessment in Maradi. The communities identified five major problems, namely:
1) schools are nearly nonexistant in the rural areas;
2 )access to education is a significant problem for girls;
3) the curriculum is inadequate;
4) language is an inhibiting factor to learning; and
5) lack of government and donor funds. CARE’s Children of the Desert – Linking Education and Democracy Project aims to improve household livelihood security in Maradi, especially in the districts of Madarounfa, Guidan Roumdji and Dakoro, by improving access to quality education.
The project includes building basic life skills, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar and language skills among 1,800 children through 12 community-managed primary schools serving 20 communities. This in turn develops the people's ability to speak for themselves. The project is participatory and demand-driven. Efforts to identify local needs rely upon direct contacts with participants, who are involved in all phases of project planning, problem identification, project design and evaluation. A participatory needs assessments in target communities helped in developing a direct relationship with project participants, and increased CARE’s knowledge and local partners’ about conditions and development needs. The project uses child-centered teaching methods and focuses on improving school management. Furthermore, this project tests a four-year curriculum cycle for children who dropped out of school (9 to 14 years) so that after the completion of this cycle, students can integrate into normal secondary school or a technical school.

Agriculture and Natural Resources

Diffa Pastoral Household Livelihood
Diffa region, eastern Niger is essentially a pastoral zone, characterized in recent times by a localized civil war and conflict between ethnic groups over water and pasture resources. The project goal is to improve livelihood security for 500 pastoral households and communities by improving management techniques to address annual variations in pastureland and inter-communal peace processes. The project includes:
1) developing the capability of households to manage fluctuations in natural resources, using a gender-sensitive approach and helping to rehabilitate the household economies (especially those of the women);
2) promoting strategies for managing
natural resources (in particular water and pasture) for families and communities, and between communities of users (temporary and permanent), in particular in situations of pasture deficit or drought;
3) and reinforcing the capacities of civil society by partnering with key groups to increase their ability to combat pastoral poverty and maintain civil order.

Women and Equality

Mata Masu Dubara (MMD) in Zinder and Diffa
CARE’s Mata Masu Dubara in Zinder and Diffa Project’s goal is to improve the socioeconomic conditions of 50 000 poor rural women and their ability to secure a better livelihood for themselves and their families by offering them access to a permanent system of savings and credit. The project does not provide financial support, but rather, offers training for groups of women interested in the creation and operation of these savings and credit associations. It also develops women's capabilities to participate in decision-making at the community and local levels through an integrated training on rights, decentralization, instructional strengthening, Community Based Organisation registration and partnership. The project also develops women's capacity to network to help them to improve their livelihood and play a role in civil society.

Experimentation Linkage to Tahous
Access to credit for developing income-generating activities is extremely limited for women in Niger. The MMD groups (credit and savings groups in CARE’s program) are currently able to deliver loans to women for amounts varying between $1 and $30 (around 60p to £18). More and more women are seeking larger loans in order to mount more viable, sustainable income-generating activities. CARE Niger is encouraging these women’s groups to establish working relationships with local financial structures, including credit unions and banks, in order to access larger amounts of credit. The project itself will provide information on possible structures to approach, including procedures for accessing credit. CARE will facilitate direct partnerships between the MMD groups and these organizations.

Rural livelihoods Development

Food Security and Nutrition Program in Niger (FSIN) (Initiative pour la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle)

A consortium led by Africare, in collaboration with CARE, Catholic Relief Services and Helen Keller International, implements this project. It aims to improve the quality of life of rural households in five particularly food insecure regions. The program uses targeted health, nutrition and food security interventions, and develops local capacity (communities and community early warning systems) to provide and sustain these services. CARE is responsible for implementing a livelihood security and nutrition program to address food security and health problems in Zinder and Tahoua. FSIN builds roads and health infrastructure through food for work operations. The development of other community infrastructure, including the rehabilitation of ponds and the development of community health centers is also addressed under this program. Finally, the program aims to develop community social capital, including the reinforcement of local safety net arrangements and social solidarity linkages that help mitigate conflict and sustain positive health behaviors and livelihood security.

Governance and Civil Society Strengthening

Maradi Youth
CARE’s Maradi Youth project aims to develop a network of youth with suitable skills to ensure a viable civil society in urban Maradi. Specifically, the project strives:
a) to increase the knowledge of 120 boys and girls in Maradi in human rights, civic participation in a democratic context and HIV/AIDS;
b) to develop a role for the youth in volunteer community awareness-raising activities;
c) to provide opportunities to the youth of Maradi to develop skills that make them employable.

The Maradi Youth Project uses a people-oriented strategy that facilitates a process whereby the rights and dignity of youth are recognized. The project works with a local NGO, Association Nigérienne pour le Bien Etre Familial, to establish a series of out-of-school educational and community activities for the youth of urban Maradi. ANBEF is responsible for project implementation and CARE’s role is to support the NGO with technical advice and methodological support during the process. CARE works at transferring sufficient and effective skills to ANBEF in terms of planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation. It is expected that the support from CARE will be progressively reduced to allow ANBEF to become fully responsible for replication and scale-up.

Capacity Development and Good Governance of Natural Resources in southern Maradi (RECAL in French)
RECAL builds on CARE’s Baban Raffi Community Development Project implemented in the rural area of Madarounfa and Guidan Roumji in southern Maradi. The project targets 25,000 men and women from 4,200 households living in the 50 communities and aims to ensure that these communities are able to strengthen and consolidate their organisational, technical and institutional capacities. At the same time, the project strives to actively involve these communities in the decentralisation process and in the local management of the natural resources in partnership with local NGOs. The project has two immediate objectives:
1) to strengthen community based
organizations’ (CBO) capacity to initiate/develop and execute local development plans in partnership with NGOs;
2) to support NGOs, associations and COFOs (Commisions foncières in French translated as Land tenure commission) in their efforts towards strengthening the local communities’ capacities for sustainable management of the natural resources and the prevention and resolution of conflicts. The lessons learned from this component helps to plan future activities in Agricultural and Natural Resources sector, civil society strengthening, advocacy, decentralisation
and conflict resolution.

Training for Women’s groups in Niger
CARE’s Training for Women’s groups project works in Dosso, Tahoua and Tillaberi districts with the aim to develop the livestock sector by strengthening women livestock producers’ access to credit and training in animal husbandry and transformation and marketing techniques for animal products. The project targets 600 women’s groups or about 12,000 women. Expected results of the project include:
1) strengthened technical and organizational capacities of women’s groups;
2) increased revenues earned from livestock production;
3) improved household food security;
4) improved social capital from social exchanges;
5) increased contact and establishment of production and
business networks;
6) an adapted saving and credit system;
7) women’s enhanced ability to amass and retain capital;
8) strengthened technical and managerial capacities of associations and public institutions; and
9) reduction of conflicts related to access to natural resources. All of these results are expected at household, groups/local institutions, community, inter-community, communal and national levels.

In addition, the project strives to strengthen the capacity of its partners, Association pour la Redynamisation de l’Elevage au Niger (AREN) and Eleveurs Sans Frontières (ESF Dangol). CARE, AREN, and ESF Dangol work in consultation with the technical services of the Ministry of Animal Resources (MRA) and the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), both of whom already support producers in the livestock sector. This partnership approach and capacity strengthening strategy for partners enable the project to achieve its objective of contributing to the reduction of poverty of the targeted beneficiaries.