Nigeria Questions and Answers

Updated April 9, 2020

What will the Foundation’s focus be in Nigeria through the Mastercard Foundation COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Program?

The Foundation will ensure that its interventions listed below, will be wholly inclusive and enable, especially young women, to improve their economic status, reduce their vulnerabilities, and acquire education and training in the long-term.

 In the short-term (implemented within 60 days)

Support First Responders

• Collaborate with international and local-based NGOs and private sector organizations to oversee the delivery of hospital beds, and related items, directly to all the Infectious Hospital Disease Centers across the country. This will be done in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health and State Government Health Agencies.
• Provide assistance to companies involved in the manufacture and distribution of health-related products, including protective gear (PPEs), hospital gowns, sterile face masks, ventilators, drugs (that deal with underlying respiratory and underlying illnesses caused by the virus), respirators, and hand-sanitizers.
• Collaborate and support private sector NGOs and institutions involved in the urgent capacity building of medical personnel (doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists, etc.) in order to increase the number of first responders to ensure adequate patient care for those affected by the virus. These trained personnel will improve the capacity of the country to respond to any future epidemics or pandemics.
• Work with international NGOs to provide services, such as mentoring and counselling, to young people.

Create an MSME Support Program

• Partner with financial institutions in the immediate term to provide MSMEs, especially those in the agricultural, medical supplies, and manufacturing sectors, quick and affordable access to finance. These partnerships will ensure that food supply chains are maintained during the period of the pandemic while providing continuous medical and related supplies to first responders.
• Provide direct support to companies in the agricultural value chain to ensure smallholder farmers have access to markets as they continue to produce. This will ensure food security.
• Assist logistics companies, which transport the agri-produce from farms to processors or to markets, and the related agencies, to scale up their operations.
• Scale offline distribution systems for ‘off-grid’ communities, such as milk collection and distribution works in rural areas.
• With a focus on policy and advocacy, provide technical support for government to design incentives for farmers, agribusinesses, and retailers to scale food production and distribution.

Support Digital Solutions

• Provide support for digital solutions to assist government agencies track the COVID-19 virus as well as other electronic management solutions related to contact tracing.
• Assist in the roll-out of behaviour change campaigns, including e-campaigns, by supporting the creative industry to encourage the public to adopt recommended measures in the immediate- and longer-term.
• Support companies involved in the provision of small-scale and affordable ‘off-grid’ energy solutions (e.g., solar lamps, to assist rural and urban communities to have access to alternative power supply). This is directly linked to access to data and power for electronic devices for e-learning activities.

Support Additional Education Initiatives

• With a focus on policy reform, provide technical support for government to design and implement support for schools.
• As an urgent measure, support the creation and provision of e-learning and Distance Education models to school children, young people, vocational trainees, and other groups currently out-of-school or those unable to participate in face-to-face training. This support will include solutions to adapt the use of television and radio channels for education.

In the medium-to-long term (60 days and beyond)

 Support SMEs as they Re-tool their Business Models

• Partner with financial institutions (deposit money banks, micro-finance banks, and other CBN-regulated non-bank financial institutions) to co-develop projects that provide large-scale access to credit for MSMEs, to build the resilience of the MSMEs, and enable them to reignite the Nigerian economy. These MSMEs are largely in the agricultural, manufacturing, hospitality, digital economy, off-grid power, creative, medical, education, trade, education, transportation, and service-related sectors. The interventions with the financial institutions (FIs) will assist in the reduction of various barriers to accessing credit for MSMEs such as high interest rates and client contribution limits, while encouraging the FIs to adopt flexible credit repayment terms and leverage on CBN’s Movable Collateral Registry.
• Support solutions that provide digital platforms to MSMEs for business scale and re-positioning.
• Direct support for private sector MSMEs with capabilities for significant scale-up of their operations thus impacting their communities, in agriculture, production, hospitality, creative industry, digital solutions, etc.
• Support public and private agri-food system actors to develop and implement a strategy to scale production with a guaranteed market for farmers (useful as an emergency response and beyond).

Support the Educational Sector

• Capacity building for the educational sector to use technology in teaching and learning. Support the deployment of certified teacher training programs to enhance the integration of technology in teaching and learning.
• Drive youth engagement by utilizing technology platforms to engage and inform Foundation alumni, other youth partners, and the community at large, of our programs.
• Support the systemic use of Education Management Information Systems (EMIS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), and Data tracking for Education.
• As a long-term sustainable measure, support the deployment of nationwide e-learning solutions and platforms that will provide access to secondary and tertiary education on multiple devices and with various technologies. This may include the creation of recorded educational videos for critical exam level classes for out-of-school students.
• Design and support programs for electronic device ownership to aid education.
• Identify other donors to support public education as schools may lose one term or more of tuition revenue if they remain shut and will need to be ready for when the lockdown is lifted and students return.

 Support the Digital Economy

• Support business digitization efforts and enable businesses to adopt best-practice ‘Work-From-Home’ solutions. This will increase resilience and improve productivity of businesses, leading to increased incomes and capacity for work opportunities.
• Leverage systems of telecommunications companies, digital payment providers, and fintech organizations to rapidly scale digitally enabled goods distribution in high density localities.
• Support the enhancement and development of e-payment solutions and contactless payment systems for the most vulnerable communities, and for services that are deemed vital. In addition, enhance day-to-day transactions, while minimizing the use of cash-based transactions. This will assist in the implementation of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Cashless Policy.