Despite Nigeria’s plentiful agricultural resources and oil wealth, poverty is widespread in the country and has increased since the late 1990s. Some 70 per cent of Nigerians live on less than US$1.25 a day. Poverty is especially severe in rural areas, where up to 80 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, and social services and infrastructure are limited. The country’s poor rural women and men depend on agriculture for food and income. Women play a major role in the production, processing and marketing of food crops, and yet women, and households headed solely by women, are often the most chronically poor members of rural communities. Additionally, in recent decades the number of men migrating from rural areas in search of employment has increased, and the number of households headed solely by women has grown substantially.
To help collate information about rural poverty, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) created the Rural Poverty Portal, a website where rural poor people, policy-makers, donors, research institutes, non-governmental organizations and other development partners can share information about eradicating rural poverty. This country profile of Nigeria from within the portal provides readers with a country and government overview, information on approaches, policies, and strategies, project and programme information, testimonials, and statistics and links to other resources. Users can also use the portal to search for other countries and regions.