Niger is a country regularly prone to natural shocks, especially droughts with often unchained series of impacts on crop productivity, market price and conflicts related to access to land.  The fragile climatic conditions coupled with the unstabilized political landscape to nurture risks for agricultural production and marketing activities. Through the PARM Process, the Government of Niger and key stakeholders have i) assessed and prioritized agricultural risks; ii) identified the right tools to manage agricultural risks; iii) developed capacities on ARM; and iv) mainstreamed ARM into policy.

Setting up

The Government of Niger reaffirmed its commitment to work with PARM on ARM in Horizon 2. In that context, from 30 September 2019 to 03 October 2019, PARM conducted a mission in Niamey, Niger that aimed to present to the national party, as well as to the Technical and Financial Partners (TFPs) of Niger the objectives of the phase 2 of PARM (called PARM Horizon 2, 2019-2025), and to bring out the concrete orientations for the joint identification and implementation of actions to be undertaken in this new phase. The mission resulted in the Government of Niger confirming its interest to engage with PARM in the second phase.

Risk Assessment

In 2013, the Government of Niger, represented by the High Commission for the 3N Initiative (“Nigériens Nourrissent les Nigériens”) (HC3N), actively engaged in the process of integrating agricultural risk management into its policy framework and investment plans, in particular in collaboration with the World Bank (WB), as well as on the development of the Agricultural Risk Management Action Plan.

Since 2014, in partnership with NEPAD and other actors, PARM has been assisting the Government in this process and in the development of Agricultural Risk Management Action Plan by proposing a new ARM methodology based on a holistic approach adapted to the political, economic and geographical context of the agricultural sector in Niger.

The results of this partnership have created new capacities in risk management and developed investment proposals for ARM tools to create new opportunities to stimulate investment in agriculture and strengthen the resilience of the agricultural sector.

Design of Programme/Project

In close dialogue with HC3N (Haut-Commissariat initiative 3N), priorities in the choice of risk management instruments to be subject to an investment programme have been identified, in order to strengthen the resilience of the agricultural sector in three following areas:

1. Warrantage and forward contracts connected to the national strategy on food crises, notably through institutional purchases and in particular purchases from small producers;
2. Strengthening information systems related to ARM;
3. Capacity building in ARM as a cross-cutting tool, complementary to the other two

A project concept note as prerequisite to the design of the ARM investment program was developed by PARM and approved by the Niger government. The latter will complement a number of ongoing or planned projects that intervene in agricultural production and product storage with a system deemed relevant for warrantage and third-party holding, which will provide a strong complementarity with the existing projects.

Sharing

On 1^st November 2022, PARM, has organized a co-vision and co-creation workshop to share experiences and identify good agricultural risk management (ARM) practices to be integrated into the PARMN (Programme d’Atténuation des Risques de Marché au Niger) project and to gather elements for improving and contextualizing the content of the project components. The workshop welcomed the active participation of over 60 participants from relevant stakeholders.

This was followed by a technical workshop that concluded to the validation of the project outline contained in the Aide-Memoire which was signed by the High Commissioner of HC3N and Minister of Agriculture, Mr Ali Bety.

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