Focus on rural development

July 6, 2025, was celebrated as World Rural Development Day. Established by United Nations (UN) General Assembly proclamation on September 6, 2024, it was to highlight the importance of rural development and its unwavering commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Essentially, it was aimed at shining sustained light on the lives and struggles […]

July 6, 2025, was celebrated as World Rural Development Day. Established by United Nations (UN) General Assembly proclamation on September 6, 2024, it was to highlight the importance of rural development and its unwavering commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Essentially, it was aimed at shining sustained light on the lives and struggles of dwellers some of who live in the most remote and forgotten places of the earth, tilling the soil, harvesting the seas, and nurturing the land in rural corners of the world. The day is to draw attention to their disproportionate burden of poverty, hunger, limited access to essential services, insecurity and exclusion.

The day also brings to the fore the resilience of these rural dwellers particularly women, indigenous peoples, and youth that is too often overlooked especially the crucial roles they play in the areas of agricultural development, food security, and ecological stewardship.

The resolution, therefore, called for their empowerment through access to land, decent work, and inclusion in decision-making, envisioning a future in which rural prosperity is no longer an elusive ideal, but a shared global achievement.

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The observance of World Rural Development Day was not intended as a mere ceremonial gesture but as a symbolic and strategic catalyst for meaningful action by governments, civil society, international organisations, and academic institutions.

This, they are expected to do through concrete activities, policy dialogue, and locally-driven grassroots initiatives that elevates rural voices, galvanise development efforts, and renew the world’s collective promise to leave no one behind, no matter their location.

This is more so in Nigeria where majority of those in extreme poverty live in rural areas. The World Bank, in its Poverty and Equity Brief for Nigeria published in April 2025, noted that approximately 129 million people are living below the poverty line, with a significant number – 75.5 per cent – in rural areas. Generally, the alarming statistics of deepening economic hardship in the country’s rural regions is further underpinned by its report highlighting that 41.3 per cent of the urban population in Nigeria live in extreme poverty, meaning that the remaining 58.9 per cent live in indigence in the rural areas.

Even globally, the statistics are equally grim. Statistics by UNDP in 2024 shows that more than one billion people face acute multidimensional poverty, with children being over half of them; and that half of rural populations lack health coverage.

Statistics from Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) show that family farms, which are majorly in the rural areas, globally are responsible for producing approximately 80 per cent of the world’s food in value terms, making them the largest source of food production and employment worldwide.

Rural areas sit on the climate front line, enduring droughts, floods, and extreme heat. In 2024, 83 per cent of urban residents used the internet versus 50 per cent in rural areas.

While we at Daily Trust join the world in marking World Rural Development Day, we demand that both the federal and state governments live up to the expectations of the several initiatives launched for developing rural areas especially those focusing on improving infrastructure, agriculture, and livelihoods. They include agricultural development programmes, River Basin Development Authorities, rural electrification schemes, and various poverty alleviation programmes.

We call on the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) to fulfil its mandate of increasing access to electricity in rural and underserved communities especially through initiatives like the Rural Electricity Users Cooperative Society (REUCS) and community engagement programmes, which they have neglected.

Moreover, Daily Trust reminds local government councils that they are envisioned to play a vital role in rural development by providing essential services, infrastructure, and social amenities that improve the lives of rural dwellers, acting as crucial links between the government and the grassroots through facilitation of development programmes and promoting community participation. For now, majority of the local councils have forgotten the performance of their constitutional and ancillary roles, and becoming centres for sharing monthly federal allocations. This must stop.

We also implore International Fund for Agricultural Development, which since 1985 have played significant role in Nigeria’s rural development to refocus on greater sustenance of initiatives to enhance food security, poverty reduction, access to essential services like education and healthcare, agricultural development, and improving rural livelihoods through empowerment of smallholder farmers, particularly women, through various projects and programmes.

These are important as the prevailing lack of opportunities, infrastructure, healthcare, and educational opportunities in the rural areas are driving young people to seek better prospects in cities, leading to rural-urban migration which leaves the aging population in villages.

Moreover, there should be concerted efforts to develop the rural areas in order to preserve our traditional ways of life, including cultural practices and crafts. This push would also support job creation, agricultural productivity, investment in quality education including vocational training essential for equipping rural populations with the skills and knowledge needed for economic advancement and social mobility.

It is time for Nigeria to transform its rural areas into thriving centres of opportunity through a multi-faceted approach with focus on agriculture, infrastructure, and social and economic empowerment. There is no reinventing the wheel. This requires dusting up the several initiatives and implementing them.