Poverty Alleviation Program - Eastern Nigeria

We have identified that one of the key reasons for the continuous poverty cycle in Eastern Nigeria and indeed all of sub-Sahara Africa, in years immediately following 2001 and beyond, is the lack of employment for young men and women.

In 90% of this region, the problem today is not a lack of primary education but rather lack of jobs and other independent living endeavor for young women and men coming out of primary, secondary and post-secondary schools.

ICA has identified that the introduction of trade and skills training programs will provide another avenue for these young people to gain valuable trades skills which will allow them to obtain meaningful jobs. This will consequently improve the economic situations for the youth and families, and eventually their local communities.

Small Business, Enterprise Development & Skills Training

ICA's program will focus more on the practical small project development and executions in the areas of small-business and enterprise development and also on skills training. ICA's Board of Directors will pick projects suitable for specific poverty alleviation ventures in specific communities and will find the resources necessary for establishing and managing such projects.

Our focus in the short-term (2008 - 2012) is going to be on providing some capitalization for the provision of tools, skills training and multi micro-enterprise growth development projects. We believe that these are the key areas through which we can make the maximum impact on the economic development and consequently, poverty alleviation in Africa today.

Micro-credit & revolving capital

With the current high demand for seed capital for projects in sub-Sahara Africa,  we will give higher consideration to projects with higher developmental impacts and  that could offer close to 100% cost recovery within a considerable space of time. We would like to revolve and reinvest funds into several projects, one after the other, to get them to the points where they are self-sustaining. 

We will apply appropriate micro-credit and revolving loan schemes to achieve individual project success.