By Iroyin Yoruba Television
ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigeria is developing a climate-finance framework aimed at helping smallholder farmers secure funding to withstand droughts, flooding and other climate-related threats to agricultural production.
The initiative is intended to connect farmers with financial resources for climate adaptation, improve accountability in the use of funds and encourage banks and private investors to support agricultural resilience.
Dahiru Muhammed, chairman of the Presidential Implementation Committee on Technology Transfer, outlined the initiative during a workshop on adaptation and resilience financing in Abuja.
The proposed framework will use a national taxonomy to identify activities eligible for climate-related financing. The taxonomy is being developed by the Federal Ministry of Finance and the United Nations Development Programme, while the committee and its partners are working to make the framework operational.
A clear classification system is expected to help financial institutions and investors determine which agricultural projects qualify for climate finance and how funding can be directed towards activities that reduce climate-related risks.
The initiative comes as farmers across Nigeria face challenges from irregular rainfall, drought, flooding and other environmental pressures. These conditions can damage crops, destroy fish farms, affect livestock production and reduce the incomes of farming households.
At the workshop, participants called for financial mechanisms tailored to the needs of different agricultural sectors and regions. Suggested approaches included index-based insurance, blended finance and the use of public funds as guarantees to encourage commercial banks to lend to farmers.
Christoph Junghleisch, managing director of YAPU Solutions, said climate adaptation could represent an investment opportunity worth as much as $30 billion annually for smallholder farmers.
He outlined plans for a possible initial pilot worth between $100 million and $200 million, with an ambition to scale financing to $1 billion in a first expansion phase.
These figures represent proposed targets and investment opportunities, not money already secured or disbursed to farmers.
The proposed financing model would also use digital systems to document transactions and improve transparency. Such systems could help track whether funds reach their intended beneficiaries and provide records that financial institutions and programme managers can audit.
Participants stressed that public funding alone would not be sufficient to meet the scale of investment required. Cooperation among government agencies, banks, development-finance institutions, agricultural organisations and private investors will be important to building a sustainable financing system.
They also called for climate finance to cover livestock, fisheries and aquaculture alongside crop production, noting that floods and extreme weather can cause substantial losses in these sectors.
For farmers, the effectiveness of the framework will ultimately depend on whether financing is affordable, accessible and delivered in time to support practical measures such as irrigation, improved storage, climate-resilient farming methods and recovery after extreme weather events.
The initiative is still being developed, and its impact will depend on the final financing arrangements, eligibility requirements, implementation timetable and the amount of capital actually mobilised.
Nigeria’s proposed climate-finance framework aims to expand access to funding for smallholder farmers, but the announced financing figures remain targets rather than confirmed disbursements.