Tag: AGILE

The Federal Government has said it enrolled 3.9 million girls in secondary schools across 18 states under the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) project.

The AGILE National Project Coordinator Amina Haruna said this at the re-launch of the initiative with the theme: Madubi: Empowering Girls, Transforming Communities.

Haruna said 1 million girls had graduated from life skills and digital literacy acquisition training under the AGILE programme.

The AGILE initiative is a $1.2 billion World Bank flagship programme targeted at addressing the multifaceted barriers faced by girls, particularly in marginalised and underserved communities in completing their secondary education.

The project is implemented by the Federal Ministry of Education in Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe, Zamfara, Borno, Ekiti, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, and Plateau states.

She said: “I am proud to share that under this project, we have increased enrolment, retention and completion over the three and a half years of implementation with 3.9 million girls in secondary schools.

“We have constructed and completed over 200 Junior (JSS) and Senior Secondary Schools (SSS), renovated 8,800 WASH/toilet facilities with boreholes and solar facilities.

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“More than 460,949 pieces of furniture have been provided. AGILE has recruited and deployed 16,232 teachers with 50 per cent of these figures being females.

“Over 53,491 teaching and learning materials were also provided to schools for effective and efficient teaching and learning.”

Haruna also said schools under AGILE intervention had developed entrepreneurial skills by setting up small scale businesses in the forms of fish ponds and livestock, as part of climate change to generate income for them.

The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmed, said the government would soon unveil a new initiative, called LUMINA, to target the provision of education and vocational training opportunities for girls in hard-to-reach locations.

She said there was a need to ensure that girls in such locations were provided effective educated.

The minister, who maintained that every child deserves a chance to dream, stressed that it was important for the government to support the girls to actualise their dreams by ensuring increased enrolment, as well as retention and completion of adolescent girls’ education.

Ahmed urged stakeholders to continue to challenge the barriers that stand against girls’ education while creating a country where all girls could have their dreams realised in the new millennium.

THE five-year World Bank-funded Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) project being implemented in Sokoto State has improved the enrolment and transition level of education of the girl child to 61%.

The development followed the commitment of the state government to education with commensurate investment in infrastructure and other basic facilities.

Sokoto State is one of the 18 focal implementing states of AGILE projects that seeks to impact the lives of adolescent girls.

Speaking at a 2-day training and capacity building workshop organised for education managers on service delivery , Alhaji Abdullahi Marafa, Director Planning, Research and Statistics, said education was at the front burner of the state government’s 9-point priority  agenda driven policies.

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“The state government has committed close to 26% of its budget allocation to education, which is the bench mark.”

He explained that no fewer than 22 primary schools had so far been renovated and upgraded to standard with basic facilities that include toilets, solar borehole, classrooms among others for use by boys and girls pupils.

“All these are aimed at providing conducive teaching and learning activities,” he said, disclosing that similar projects were being designed in phases for other schools across the state.

“We are collaborating with other development partners in training more teachers to support AGILE project in the state to achieve its objectives,” Marafa said during a presentation which also highlighted the need for stakeholders to harmonise their input to ensure transition and completion of adolescent girls education.

• Strengthens advocacy, media involvement

No fewer than 20 million girls across 18 states have benefitted from the Adolescence Girls Initiative for Learning and Education (AGILE) in the last one year.

The project has so far reached over 1.6 million persons across seven initial implementing states of Katsina, Ekiti, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, Kebbi, Nassarawa and Borno.

AGILE is a Federal Government project supported by the World Bank, which focuses more on Northern Nigeria to encourage, positively reposition and change the narratives of girls towards their education and future.

Project Coordinator in Sokoto State, Dr. Mansur Isah Buhari, at its maiden bi-annual media round table, tagged ‘Implementing to Complement’, said: “We have given 199,921 scholarships, renovated 6,914 schools, provided 6,704 WASH facilities and over 6,000 girls have learnt skills and digital literacy.

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“In Sokoto, we have renovated 367 Junior and Senior Secondary schools and built 56 across the 23 local government areas. By the end of 2024, no fewer than 54 girls would have benefitted from the project scholarship programme.”

According to Buhari, media involvement in driving the objective of the project was essential and key to realising the desired success in the process of implementing its template.

He described the media as ‘a dependable tool and instrument that would help AGILE counter the general misconceptions and negative perceptions of its activities, particularly in the north’.