Diversifying Livelihoods for Flood-Resilient Communities

Context

The drylands of northern Nigeria have become increasingly susceptible to recurrent floods and drought uncertainties, necessitating the exploration of alternative socio-economic strategies to diversify livelihood options, strengthen community resilience, and mitigate the effects of these weather uncertainties. Women are disproportionately impacted by these occurrences, as they live in poverty and engage largely in labor-intensive agricultural work, lacking access to finance, training and decision-making. This project will explore the potential of diversifying livelihoods as a key component of building flood resilience in northern Nigeria’s drylands, with emphasis on Jigawa State, through assessment of the factors that shape the resilience and vulnerability of rural women in the face of recurring floods. Livelihood diversification strategies will be assessed, together with their key enabling factors and barriers towards increasing flood-resiliency.

Aims and Objectives

This project will establish long-lasting interdisciplinary collaboration between the UoY and Bayero University Kano (BUK) through the following activities, focused on addressing the research problem identified above:

• 4-week visit of the international collaborator to the UoY to allow structured engagements with relevant colleagues at York and establish the grounding for follow-up, long-term collaborations. 
• Joint paper writing focused on the identification of alternative livelihood diversification approaches to build flood resilience among women farmers in Northern Nigeria. 
• Delivery of a seminar at the UoY by the international collaborator, aimed at presenting the initial findings of the paper and gathering feedback from York-based colleagues.

The new collaborative network will drive further opportunities for research and dissemination. It is envisaged that these activities will lead to the delivery of a final project workshop in Nigeria, aimed at informing the formulation of a context-specific livelihood diversification framework for flood prone communities in dryland ecosystems, which implementation will be sought by identifying future funding to expand the scope of the work.