Infrastructure and development: catalysis or cataclysms in Africa? The case of ‘fadama’ farming in Nigeria

This paper examines a World Bank initiative in Nigeria designed to attack poverty through the empowerment of the people by providing infrastructure for development. The initiative concerned so-called ‘fadama’ (Hausa for low-lying floodplains) projects, initiated in the 1990s to promote low-cost improved irrigation technology, with later stages implemented in 2006 and 2007. The study focused on ‘fadama’ activities in the Ajibode Resettlement Area of the University of Ibadan. The results indicate that this was a top-down, politically motivated and elite-based development strategy. Rather than catalysing development, the projects posed more problems than were addressed initially. App., bibliogr., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract]