Salamatu-WOFAN on Climate Change: Turning Adversity into Prosperity By Prof. M. K. Othman

Salamatu-WOFAN on Climate Change: Turning Adversity into Prosperity
By
Prof. M. K. Othman

The reality of climate change and its consequences in Nigeria are indisputable, and the only option for the country is to have a sustainable mitigation strategy in place. Climate change has threatened Nigeria’s development trajectory, environmental stability, and human security. The impacts are multifaceted, affecting every sector from agriculture to infrastructure, and exacerbating existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities. In recent years, the consequences on agriculture have had devastating effects, resulting in significant losses of lives and property and severely impacting Nigerian food security. Climate change has worsened resource competition, causing pastoralists to migrate south and sparking violent clashes with farmers, which have evolved into banditry and insurgency—an ongoing national disaster.
It has caused devastating floods in many communities. In 2022 and 2023, Nigeria experienced its worst flooding in over a decade, displacing more than 2 million people across 34 states in 2022 and affecting 4.2 million people in 2023. The floods resulted from heavier rainfall linked to climate change, combined with the release of excess water from neighboring countries—Cameroon and the Niger Republic. According to experts, some states are already experiencing about a 20% decrease in growing days due to changing climate patterns. Climate change impacts such as unpredictable rainfall, heatwaves, biodiversity loss, and soil degradation require urgent adaptation measures.
Nigeria’s climate crisis represents a complex, multifaceted challenge that threatens to undo development gains and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. The 2021 Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index ranks Nigeria as the 53rd most vulnerable country and the 6th least ready nation to adapt to climate change. While Nigeria contributes less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it faces disproportionate impacts that require both domestic action and international support.
Addressing these challenges requires concerted efforts from stakeholders to implement existing government policy while developing new, innovative solutions tailored to Nigeria’s diverse ecological zones and populations. The attempt to address the climate change challenges in Nigeria, with its devastating impact on agriculture, is a strong motivation that attracts WOFAN’s intervention.
Dr. Salamatu Garba Kano, a visionary and persistent leader, founded the Women Farmers Advancement Network (WOFAN) as a non-governmental organization in the early 1990s. WOFAN has positively impacted the lives of over seven million Nigerians through capacity building and entrepreneurship along the agricultural value chains across ten states in Nigeria. It has achieved numerous successes in eradicating hunger, reducing poverty, and economically empowering youth, vulnerable groups, and people with special needs under the ICON 2 Project, funded by the Mastercard Foundation. Therefore, addressing the effects of climate change is a key element in reaching WOFAN’s goals.
The goal of WOFAN is to help improve the quality of life for rural communities sustainably through effective partnerships, sourcing and promoting innovative, demand-driven, and affordable technologies, and by training trainers on skills and knowledge sharing at the village and community project levels.
From the outset, WOFAN identified climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices and the opportunities offered by carbon markets as a comprehensive and sustainable strategy to address climate change challenges in Nigeria. Under the WOFAN-ICON 2 project, experts were supported with an intensive capacity building on CSA and carbon credits in Paris, France, in July 2025. The workshop was tagged: “Green Gold: Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) and Carbon Credit Opportunities”.
The Paris Workshop increased awareness among experts about the potential of CSA practices—such as improved crop varieties, soil health management, agroforestry, and water conservation—to boost productivity, resilience, and climate change adaptation. It also highlighted new opportunities for smallholder farmers to access carbon markets, providing financial incentives to adopt sustainable practices. It offers a dual benefit for farmers: higher productivity and access to economic rewards through the sale of carbon credits. However, WOFAN acknowledged the need for better coordination among stakeholders, supportive policies, and greater awareness to promote widespread adoption of these practices for the benefit of both farmers and the nation.
Without much delay, WOFAN organized a high-level, one-day multi-stakeholder meeting to discuss “Climate-Smart Agriculture and Carbon Opportunities to Build Resilient, Sustainable Smallholder Farming in Nigeria,” held at Transcorp Hilton Hotels in Abuja. About eighty carefully selected stakeholders, including representatives from academia, policymakers, industries, NGOs, farmers, and the National Assembly, participated in the meeting. The participants were fully informed about the urgent need to develop a concrete plan of action for encouraging smallholder farmers to adopt CSA and benefit from the carbon market. Three papers were presented, followed by group sessions and deliberations with fruitful outcomes.
During the meeting, the WOFAN-ICON2 Project Country Director, Dr.Salamatu Garba, said, “We decided to organize this multi-stakeholder meeting because many farmers in Nigeria do not understand what Climate-Smart Agriculture is all about and how to access Carbon Credit, which can boost agricultural development in the country.” She added, “For every action you take in addressing climate change, there’s a bonus, there’s a credit that is supposed to be given. So we need to create awareness, train people to understand what this is, get the right policy framework, talk to policymakers so that we understand these things, review our existing climate change policies, and partner with the National Council on Climate Change and others so that all of us can integrate our work.” she noted “At present, everyone is working in isolation. We must consolidate efforts, assign clear roles, and leverage each organisation’s strengths “.
The two main issues of the meeting are CSA and the carbon market, which are relatively unfamiliar to farming communities across the country. What is CSA? It is a practice that sustainably boosts productivity, improves adaptive capacity to climate change, and cuts carbon emissions. CSA is more than just a set of practices; it’s an integrated approach to achieving sustainable agricultural development. Nigerian farmers use several CSA practices, such as integrated soil fertility management, water harvesting techniques, conservation agriculture, agroforestry, forestry, and post-harvest and value addition. While some Nigerian farmers are already familiar with these practices, they primarily use them to increase productivity rather than for financial incentives through carbon credits. How can smallholder farmers benefit from the carbon market when using CSA?
Many adopted CSA practices can generate carbon offsets through carbon dioxide sequestration, resulting in carbon credits that are valued in US dollars. Greenhouse gas emissions are the leading cause of climate change, while CSA practices aim to reduce these emissions. Industries are the primary “culprits” of greenhouse gas emissions and often purchase carbon credits voluntarily or to comply with regulations, while those who reduce emissions sell the carbon credits.
Farmers in other countries are already making money from carbon credit sales. In 2023, farmers in Ghana earned $4.8 million by reducing nearly one million tons of carbon emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation. In Kenya, the Western Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project (Vi Agroforestry) combines CDM and VCS, engaging over 60,000 farmers through 30 different intermediary communities; participants receive on average $200–$300 per half-hectare over a 10-year contract, all supported by county-level extension services. Imagine a smallholder farmer in Nigeria earning $400 per hectare, which is equivalent to 640,000 Naira, from carbon credits alone, in addition to profits from his farm business. Elon Musk’s Tesla, electric vehicles, earned a record $2.8 billion in 2024 from trading in regulatory carbon credits. The company earns money by selling these credits to manufacturers producing fossil fuel vehicles to help them meet environmental targets.
We must give a thumbs-up to WOFAN – Dr. Salamutu Garba and her commendable team, led by WOFAN Technical Board Chairman, Prof Sani Miko, for their green gold initiative to involve smallholder farmers in the global carbon market, transforming adversity into opportunity. All discerning stakeholders should come together to support WOFAN in achieving its ambitious goal. Everyone needs to lend a hand. May God see us through it successfully, amen.