The World Bank in rural Nigeria, revisited: a review of the World Bank's Nigeria: agricultural sector review 1987

Abstract

The World Bank's policy recommendations have come under extensive and often critical scrutiny in Nigeria, as elsewhere, since the military government adopted the main tenets of the World Bank's Structural Adjustment Programme [SAP]. SAP has had a major impact on agriculture, notably as a result of the substantial devaluation of the naira through the creation of the Foreign Exchange Market [FEM] and the abolition of the Commodity Marketing Boards [CMBs]. These long overdue reforms have sharply raised prices for export crops in naira and improved the competitiveness of crops grown in Nigeria as against imports. Less attention has been paid to the World Bank's policies for agriculture, despite the extensive involvement of the Bank, through the projects it has funded. The World Bank's 1987 Agricultural Sector Review [ASR] sustains the analysis and recommendations of previous reviews of agricultural policy in Nigeria, notably of the Consortium for the Study of Nigerian Rural Development [CSNRD], and of the Bank itself. ASR recommends the development of what it calls ‘tradeable’ crops, cocoa, rubber and oilseeds, as well as maize and cotton, by applying ‘improved’ technical packages and raising ‘management skills’. These were the intended foci of the crop rehabilitation projects and of the Agricultural Development Projects [ADPs] initiated and funded by the World Bank in the 1970s. It is apparent from the report and its annexes that these projects failed to realise the expected returns, but the report itself conceals the World Bank's own involvement.