ActionAid Nigeria on Wednesday, 7 August 2024 launched a new Country Strategy Paper (CSP), Citizens’ Action to End Poverty and Injustice. The CSP builds on the organisation’s many years of work in Nigeria.

It is founded on the lessons learnt in implementing previous CSPs and programming in Nigeria. Each of these strategies reflected the context with an appropriate response within the period it operated. The first two strategies focused on the paradox of poverty amid plenty and analysis of the roles of stakeholders, including citizens and government in responding to poverty.

The third strategy, Take Action: End Poverty, recognised the role of business in influencing and/or deepening poverty. Hence, ActionAid Nigeria prioritised pushing for progressive taxation to support the government’s drive to generate resources to fund social sectors among other actions. In the last CSP, Social Justice to End Poverty, steps were taken to work more with allies and social movements to advance social justice and poverty eradication. It has been learnt that poverty is multifaceted, cannot be compartmentalised and requires a more nuanced approach.

In this CSP, ActionAid Nigeria is deepening its engagement and focusing on responding to multidimensional poverty, seeing how poverty and injustice are weaponised against the poor and excluded. As a learning organisation, it strongly believes that the current Nigerian context would require innovation through a social movement mindset in acting to address the multidimensional poverty that we face as a country.

Nearly 12 per cent of the global population was living in extreme poverty in 2023, and this figure has evidently worsened due to ongoing conflicts, wars, and disasters across the globe. In Nigeria, where the poverty threshold is 1.90 U.S. dollars a day (about 3000 using the official rate), 133 million of our 200 million people are multidimensionally poor. This means that they not only lack financial resources but also lack access to essential services such as education, healthcare, and clean water. If you are not one of the 133 million, it is likely that your family members—extended or nuclear—are, and if we do not address this now, future generations may face the same plight. Hope and belief is not a strategy, hope and belief must be accompanied by action. This is the essence of the ActionAid Nigeria’s CSP.

ActionAid Nigeria is committed to harnessing this power through its CSP, focusing on four critical actions: Organise, Act, Shift, and Thrive. The organisation’s strategy is not only about addressing immediate needs but also about empowering citizens to drive systemic change. It is dedicated to a human rights-based approach, placing the dignity and rights of every individual at the centre of its work. Communities will be engaged not merely as beneficiaries but as active partners in their development.

It is therefore important to draw strength from past successes and resolve to make a tangible difference in the lives of the ultra-marginalised and vulnerable populations. This strategy is not just a plan; it is a pledge to act with urgency, integrity, and unwavering commitment.