Nigeria
| With a population of over 182 million people in 2015, Nigeria became the most populous country in Africa, and ranked number 7th most populous in the world. With current rapid population growth, the country’s population is projected to reach 400 million by 2050 and 730 million by 2100. Nigeria is also among the top nations in the world in regard to largest population of youth, with more than 40% of the population aged 14 years old or younger. The country’s birth rate is significantly higher than the death rate, with 37.3 births/ 1,000 population in 2016.
Despite the issue of overpopulation, the modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) has increased very little, with only 10% of married women of reproductive age using any modern contraception. Fewer than one out of five married women use contraception while 16% of women who want to space their pregnancies are not using family planning (FP). At the 2012 London Summit in Family Planning, the Government of Nigeria committed to increase the CPR to 36% by 2018. |
In 2013, only 10% of currently married women aged 15-49 were using modern contraceptive methods, a small increase from 2003.
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s (BMGF) FP investments in Nigeria focus primarily at the national level and in two target states, Lagos and Kaduna, with additional co-funded work in Oyo State.
The FP investment portfolio in Nigeria has been expanding rapidly and includes several newer investments in addition to the established Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI), which began implementation in 2010 under the NURHI 1 project. The current iteration, NURHI 2, continues to focus primarily on demand generation and FP service provision demonstration activities as well as advocacy interventions. The current portfolio includes more recent investments in the areas of government capacity building in FP management and planning, advocacy and private sector provision of services. Strong evidence exists on the impact of the NURHI 1 demonstration model; however, gaps in evidence exist for the newer institutional capacity building, private sector and advocacy investments. Service delivery investments are more heavily focused on the public sector as compared to private sector investment.
The expansion of the BMGF FP portfolio in Nigeria reflects the hypothesis that demonstrating an effective, innovative FP program may not be sufficient to achieve replication and scale-up of portfolio strategies by the government and other donors. Barriers related to government FP management, capacity, and data use – as well as the visibility of FP issues at the national and state levels – might hinder the expansion of successful interventions.
An overview of the BMGF FP investments in Nigeria can be viewed at the interactive timeline.