World Bank Approves $500m Loan For Education In Nigeria

The World Bank has approved a $500m loan for Nigeria through the International Development Association.

The loan is targeted  at improving education opportunities among girls.

The project to be implemented under the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment will only cover seven targeted areas in the country, with about six million beneficiaries.

The states that would benefit are Kano, Kebbi, Kaduna, Katsina, Borno, Plateau, and Ekiti.  

This was contained in a statement seen by THE WHISTLER, where the multilateral lender noted that 80 per cent of households in the North were poor and unable to cover education costs.

The World Bank said, “In northern Nigeria, the lack of secondary schools is significantly greater with up to ten primary schools for every secondary school.

“The poor condition of infrastructure and a lack of water sanitation and hygiene facilities makes it difficult for girls to stay in school.”

The lender said if there are no interventions, 1.3 million girls out of the 1.85 million who began primary school in 2017/2018 in the northern states will drop out before reaching the last year of junior secondary school.

According to the World Bank, there is no better investment to accelerate Nigeria’s human capital development than to significantly boost girls’ education.

The  World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, was quoted in the statement to have said, “The AGILE project will enable Nigeria to make progress in improving access and quality of education for girls, especially in northern Nigeria.

“Addressing the key structural impediments in a comprehensive way will create the enabling environment to help Nigeria ensure better outcomes for girls, which will translate into their ability to contribute to productivity and better economic outcomes for themselves and the country.”

Details of the projects showed that 5,500 JSSs and 3,300 classrooms for SSSs would be built across the states among others.