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The REF Review

Journal of Development Studies, Policy and Practice

Revue d'études, de politiques et de pratiques du développement

ISSN
3156-4119
Current issue
Vol. 1, No. 1 (2026)
Frequency
Twice yearly
Published from
Abuja, Nigeria

Editorial notice. The journal is completing its editorial review. Volume 1, Number 1 is published below. External submissions open when the review is complete; until then, enquiries go to [email protected].

Lead article

Volume 1, Number 1, 2026

Article principal

Research article

The 12 Million Mandate: Sovereign Institutional Multiplicity, SDG Alignment and the Political Economy of Women’s Agricultural Empowerment in Nigeria

Prince Abdulsalami Ladigbolu-Oranmiyan and Elizabeth Egbetokun

UNESCO REF Research Unit, Abuja; Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) National Office, Abuja

Nigeria has never lacked programmes for women in agriculture. From the Better Life Programme for Rural Women in 1987 to the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme and the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, successive interventions have been designed, funded and launched, yet the gender gap has proved remarkably durable: women manage only 21 per cent of farm plots, produce 30 per cent less per hectare than men, and the forgone output costs the economy an estimated US$2.3 billion a year. This article argues that the persistence of the gap is an institutional problem rather than a programmatic one. The constraints on women’s farming are held in place by four sources of authority at once: the constitutional state, customary institutions, international development mandates and organised civil society. Programmes that engage one or two of these leave the remaining constraints intact.

We introduce sovereign institutional multiplicity (SIM) to describe a programme architecture that formally activates all four, and we specify observable criteria that separate formal activation from symbolic participation. The concept is developed through an institutional inception study of the UNESCO REF Young Women in Agriculture (YWA) programme, launched in Abuja in 2026 with a mobilisation target of twelve million women. The design fully meets the activation criteria in the international and civil society registers, and partly meets them in the constitutional and customary registers, where federal-state cost sharing and land-access protocols remain to be formalised. The article closes with five testable propositions and a delivery framework for replication under the CAADP 2026–2035 agenda.

Keywords: women in agriculture; institutional design; legal pluralism; traditional authority; polycentric governance; SDG 2; SDG 5; CAADP; Nigeria

Pages
1–38
DOI
10.67943/refreview.2026.001
Received
June 2026
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Read the full article

Contents of this issue

6 items

Sommaire du numéro

  1. 1to 38

    Research article

    The 12 Million Mandate: Sovereign Institutional Multiplicity, SDG Alignment and the Political Economy of Women’s Agricultural Empowerment in Nigeria

    Prince Abdulsalami Ladigbolu-Oranmiyan and Elizabeth Egbetokun

    Women in agricultureinstitutional designSDG 2 and SDG 5

    Read the full article
  2. 39to 62

    Research article

    Price Before Credit: Negotiated Tuition Subsidy, Transnational Online Education and Access to Accredited Higher Education in Nigeria

    Prince Abdulsalami Ladigbolu-Oranmiyan and Nicos Nicolaou

    UNESCO REF, Abuja; Unicaf, Cyprus

    Abstract

    Demand for higher education in Nigeria far exceeds the capacity of its institutions, and for many qualified applicants the barrier to an accredited international qualification is cost rather than ability. The Student Loans (Access to Higher Education) Act of 2024 created a credit instrument for study at home, leaving the international pathway without a structured instrument. This article examines the Educational Financial Facility Scheme (EFFS), commissioned by UNESCO REF on 18 February 2026, as a case of what we term price-first access policy. For accredited online study delivered through transnational education partners, the scheme negotiates the price of tuition down at source, by 86 per cent for undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programmes and by 75 per cent for professional programmes. Credit is reserved for in-person study abroad, where structured tuition loans are provided by placement partners and their financial affiliates. Both instruments cover tuition only.

    Drawing on scheme documentation, administrative records for the first cycle, in which more than 6,850 Nigerians enrolled across professional, undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programmes, and the literature on cost sharing, student loans and transnational education, we argue that reducing price before extending credit lowers learners’ debt exposure, keeps graduates in the national labour market during study, and allows a non-lending institution to widen access at scale. We identify three conditions on which the model’s durability depends: domestic recognition of accredited online qualifications, completion support for learners studying at a distance, and a single verified administrative channel that protects applicants from fraud. The article proposes a typology of subsidy-led and credit-led access instruments and sets out a research agenda on completion, recognition and labour-market returns.

    Higher education financetransnational educationSDG 4

    Full text forthcoming
  3. 63to 91

    Research article

    Out of School, Into Harm: Child Labour, Exclusion from Schooling and Vulnerability to Violent Extremist Recruitment in Nigeria

    UNESCO REF

    UNESCO REF Research Unit, Abuja

    Abstract

    Nigeria has one of the largest out-of-school child populations in the world, and in several regions the same children are drawn into hazardous labour and exposed to recruitment by armed groups. This article reviews the evidence connecting these three conditions, drawing on the proceedings of the UNESCO REF Nigeria Police Youths Summit (2024), national crime statistics and UNICEF Nigeria child-welfare data. It argues that the relationship is best understood as a pathway of compounding vulnerability, in which exclusion from schooling increases exposure to exploitative work and exploitative work increases exposure to recruitment, rather than as a single cause. The article identifies the points along this pathway at which intervention is most likely to interrupt it, and assesses the UNESCO REF digital skills framework of The August Project as a preventive instrument. It recommends that digital literacy be considered within child-protection provision under the Child Rights Act 2003, and sets out the longitudinal data that would be needed to test the pathway directly.

    Child protectioneducation policySDG 4 and SDG 16

    Read online
  4. 92to 124

    Impact evaluation

    From Westminster to 1.2 Million: An Institutional Impact Evaluation of The August Project (TAP) Digital Skills Programme, 2019–2026

    UNESCO REF

    UNESCO REF Research Unit, Abuja. Programme partners: Arden University, United Kingdom; Sonic Foundry, United States

    Abstract

    This evaluation examines seven years of The August Project, the UNESCO REF digital skills programme, from its launch in 2019 to 2026. It assesses reach, certification outcomes, the performance of partner institutions and the programme’s contribution to SDG 4 and SDG 8 across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones. A mixed-methods design combines beneficiary surveys, analysis of institutional records and interviews with stakeholders, and measures results against the programme’s original design targets. The evaluation distinguishes what the programme reached from what it changed, and identifies the design features that should be retained, revised or retired as the programme scales.

    Digital skillsyouth employmentSDG 4 and SDG 8

    Full text forthcoming
  5. 125to 131

    Commentary

    Towards a Functional, Skills-Oriented Education System: Nigeria’s Textbook Policy and the Case for a Practical Curriculum

    UNESCO REF

    First published in The Guardian Nigeria, 27 February 2026. Commentary is not peer reviewed.

    Summary

    This commentary argues for continuity in Nigeria’s textbook reuse policy and for a decisive national shift toward skills-based, practical learning. It links the UNESCO REF Book Bank Campaign to the wider task of building a globally competitive workforce, and proposes a curriculum weighted ninety to ten in favour of practical over theoretical learning as an instrument for that shift.

    Curriculum reformskills developmentSDG 4

  6. 132to 144

    Editorial

    ISSN 3156-4119: Institutional Identity, Global Visibility and the Scholarly Positioning of The REF Review

    UNESCO REF Editorial Office

    Abstract

    The assignment of ISSN 3156-4119 is a foundational step in placing The REF Review within the infrastructure of scholarly communication. This editorial explains what ISSN registration means for a new open-access journal in sub-Saharan Africa, with reference to the framework of the ISSN International Centre in Paris, and sets out what follows from it: Crossref DOI registration, application to the Directory of Open Access Journals and, in time, to Scopus and the Web of Science. It places the journal within the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (2021) and the changing landscape of publishing in the Global South.

    Open accessscholarly infrastructure

Call for submissions

Doctoral dissertations

Thèses de doctorat

A place in Volume 1 is reserved for a doctoral dissertation in education, sustainable development, agriculture, international relations or institutional governance, reviewed double-blind by at least two independent referees.

Read the submission guidelines

Call for submissions

Field studies

Études de terrain

The journal invites empirical field studies from within the UNESCO REF programme footprint or the wider development landscape in Africa and the Global South. Quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods designs are welcome, with ethical clearance.

Read the submission guidelines

About the journal

Aims and scope

À propos de la revue

The REF Review is the scholarly journal of the Read and Earn Federation for UNESCO (UNESCO REF), published twice a year from Abuja. It publishes original research, doctoral dissertations, impact evaluations, field studies and commentary in development studies, education, agriculture, food security, governance and allied fields, with particular attention to Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa and the Global South, and to work that advances the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

Research articles are assessed through double-blind peer review by at least two independent referees. Editorial decisions are taken independently of the Federation’s programme leadership. Authors, reviewers and editors declare competing interests, and manuscripts by members of the editorial team or the Federation’s leadership are handled by an independent editor under a blinded, conflict-managed workflow.

The journal is diamond open access: authors pay no article processing charges and readers pay nothing to read. Content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, and authors retain copyright. Corrections, expressions of concern and retractions follow the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics and remain permanently linked to the version of record.

The journal is edited by Prof. Folake Akinbode, Editor-in-Chief, and Mr. Paul Mamman, Managing Editor, with Associate Editors HRM Hon. Abdulganiyu A. Ladigbolu, Prof. Oluwafisayo Onawunmi, Prof. Johnson Adetumbi, Prof. Veronica Obatolu, Dr. Ebinepere Emezue and Amb. Dr. Kehinde. The editorial board of The REF Review serves under terms of reference that guarantee its independence from UNESCO REF programme leadership.

The REF Review 1(1): The 12 Million Mandate

The REF Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2026), pp. 1–38. Research article.

The 12 Million Mandate: Sovereign Institutional Multiplicity, SDG Alignment and the Political Economy of Women’s Agricultural Empowerment in Nigeria

Le mandat des 12 millions : multiplicité institutionnelle souveraine, alignement sur les ODD et économie politique de l'autonomisation agricole des femmes au Nigeria

Prince Abdulsalami Ladigbolu-Oranmiyan1 and Elizabeth Egbetokun2

1 UNESCO REF Research Unit, Read and Earn Federation for UNESCO, Abuja, Federal Republic of Nigeria

2 Police Officers Wives Association (POWA) National Office, Abuja, Federal Republic of Nigeria

Correspondence: [email protected]

Received
June 2026
Published
2026
DOI
10.67943/refreview.2026.001
Licence
CC BY 4.0

Abstract

Résumé analytique

Nigeria has never lacked programmes for women in agriculture. From the Better Life Programme for Rural Women in 1987 to the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme and the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, successive interventions have been designed, funded and launched, yet the gender gap has proved remarkably durable: women manage only 21 per cent of farm plots, produce 30 per cent less per hectare than men, and the forgone output costs the economy an estimated US$2.3 billion a year. This article argues that the persistence of the gap is an institutional problem rather than a programmatic one. The constraints on women’s farming are held in place by four sources of authority at once: the constitutional state, customary institutions, international development mandates and organised civil society. Programmes that engage one or two of these leave the remaining constraints intact. We introduce sovereign institutional multiplicity (SIM) to describe a programme architecture that formally activates all four, and we specify observable criteria that separate formal activation from symbolic participation. The concept is developed through an institutional inception study of the UNESCO REF Young Women in Agriculture (YWA) programme, launched in Abuja in 2026 with a mobilisation target of twelve million women, drawing on programme documents, the recorded proceedings of the national launch and the records of community mobilisation in pilot Local Government Areas. The design fully meets the activation criteria in the international and civil society registers, and partly meets them in the constitutional and customary registers, where federal-state cost sharing and land-access protocols remain to be formalised. The article closes with five testable propositions and a five-component delivery framework for replication under the CAADP 2026–2035 agenda.

Keywords: women in agriculture; institutional design; legal pluralism; traditional authority; polycentric governance; feminist institutionalism; SDG 2; SDG 5; CAADP; Nigeria

1Introduction

Introduction

Few countries have tried as often as Nigeria to raise the fortunes of women who farm. The Better Life Programme for Rural Women, launched in 1987, made rural women a national political priority. The Women in Agriculture units established within the state Agricultural Development Programmes from 1988 gave them a dedicated channel of extension. The Growth Enhancement Support Scheme of 2012 promised to put subsidised inputs directly into farmers’ hands, and the Central Bank’s Anchor Borrowers’ Programme of 2015 tied credit to production. Each had genuine achievements. None closed the gap.

The most recent national evidence is unambiguous. Women are 21 per cent of Nigeria’s primary plot managers, falling to 9 per cent in the North. Those who do manage plots produce 30 per cent less per hectare than men, 35 per cent less in the North and 25 per cent less in the South. A quarter of women plot managers use any fertiliser, against nearly half of men. The forgone earnings amount to 0.6 per cent of GDP, about US$2.3 billion a year, and closing the gap could raise annual output by up to 2 per cent of GDP once multiplier effects are counted (World Bank, 2022, 2023).

Why has a problem so well documented, and so often addressed, proved so resistant? The usual answers are programmatic: inputs arrived late, credit was captured by better-connected farmers, extension officers were too few. These answers are true but incomplete. They explain why particular programmes underperformed, not why the gap has outlived every programme. This article offers an institutional answer. The constraints on women’s farming in Nigeria are not held in place by any single authority. They are sustained at once by the constitutional state, which controls budgets and statutory land law; by customary institutions, which govern the allocation and inheritance of most rural land in practice; by international development mandates, which shape financing and accountability; and by the organised bodies that represent, or fail to represent, women themselves. A programme that engages only one or two of these sources of authority can change outcomes inside its own reach, but it leaves the constraints held by the others undisturbed. When the programme ends, the gap returns.

The article makes three contributions. First, it re-measures the problem, correcting statistics that have long been repeated in policy documents without support and showing that the more reliable evidence strengthens rather than weakens the institutional argument. Second, it introduces the concept of sovereign institutional multiplicity (SIM), a programme architecture that formally activates all four sources of authority, and it defines observable criteria that distinguish formal activation from the symbolic presence of stakeholders at a launch. Third, it applies the concept to the design of the UNESCO REF Young Women in Agriculture (YWA) programme, launched in 2026 with a mobilisation target of twelve million women, and derives from that analysis five propositions that later evaluations can test and a delivery framework that other states can adopt.

We are explicit about what this article is not. It is an institutional inception study. It examines the design of a programme at launch and does not report its outcomes, which cannot yet be known. Both authors hold roles in the programme, a relationship we disclose in full and address in the research design.

2The problem, re-measured

Le problème, mesuré à nouveau

2.1 What the evidence shows

Ce que montrent les données

The most reliable picture of women’s farming in Nigeria comes from the General Household Survey Panel conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics with World Bank support. Analysis of its 2018–19 wave by the Nigeria Gender Innovation Lab, covering 5,922 plots managed by 2,852 plot managers, shows a gap at every stage of production (World Bank, 2023). Women are less likely to manage a plot at all. When they do, they farm less valuable crops, being 38 percentage points more likely than men to grow roots and tubers and 19 points less likely to grow cereals. They use fewer inputs: 25 per cent of women plot managers apply any fertiliser against 47 per cent of men, and men apply on average 87 per cent more per hectare. They have less contact with extension, in a system where a single extension officer serves more than 5,000 farmers. And the labour they hire is less productive for them than for men, because they pay more for it and command it less.

An earlier decomposition of the same survey is especially revealing for the argument of this article. Using an Oaxaca-Blinder method, Oseni et al. (2014) separated the gender gap into the part explained by differences in land, labour and inputs and the part that persists when women and men have the same resources. In the South, most of the gap disappeared once resources were equalised. In the North, women produced 28 per cent less than men even after controlling for observed inputs. A gap that survives equal endowments cannot be closed by supplying endowments alone. It reflects the returns women are able to draw from the resources they hold, and those returns are governed by norms, rules and authorities that sit outside any input programme.

2.2 The invisibility of women’s agricultural work

L'invisibilité du travail agricole des femmes

Policy documents in Nigeria and across Africa have long repeated that women produce 60 to 80 per cent of the continent’s food. The claim has no reliable empirical source (Doss, 2014). Using nationally representative time-use data from six African countries, Palacios-López et al. (2017) found that women supply about 40 per cent of crop labour on average; in Nigeria the figure is about 37 per cent (World Bank, 2023). Correcting the statistic matters for two reasons. It protects the credibility of the case for investment, which does not need to be overstated to be compelling. And it reveals the deeper problem: much of women’s agricultural work takes place on plots managed by men, in processing and in trade, where it is neither owned nor counted. The gap is not only in what women produce but in what they are recognised as producing.

This is why the YWA programme frames its target of twelve million women as a mobilisation target across agrifood systems, covering production, processing, storage and trade, rather than as a count of women plot managers. The figure is a statement of ambition and of scope. It is the task of the programme’s monitoring system, discussed in Section 8, to convert that ambition into verified enrolment and verified change.

2.3 Poverty, hunger and the cost of inaction

Pauvreté, faim et coût de l'inaction

The gender gap in agriculture sits within a wider crisis. The 2022 Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty Index found 63 per cent of the population, about 133 million people, to be multidimensionally poor, with incidence of 72 per cent in rural areas against 42 per cent in urban areas (NBS, 2022). The Cadre Harmonisé analysis of March 2024 projected 31.8 million people in acute food insecurity during that year’s lean season (FAO & WFP, 2024), and the World Food Programme projected 33.1 million for the 2025 lean season (WFP, 2024). Food inflation reached 40.87 per cent in June 2024 (NBS, 2024). On the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index for 2024, Nigeria ranked 125th of 146 countries (WEF, 2024), despite having ratified CEDAW in 1985 and adopted the Maputo Protocol. International commitments, on their own, have not changed the institutions through which land, credit and knowledge reach women.

2.4 Where public money goes

Où va l'argent public

The institutional character of the problem is visible in the federal budget. Between 2016 and 2020, the four crop value chains that received the largest federal appropriations, cotton, rice, sorghum and cocoa, were among those with the lowest participation of women, with gender gaps in participation of between 64 and 88 percentage points. Maize and yams, two of the chains with the highest participation of women, were among the least funded in 2020 (World Bank, 2023). Inputs were distributed broadly in proportion to existing participation, which sustains productivity among current farmers but does little to bring women into higher-value chains. No single ministry designed this pattern. It is the product of how budgets, crop priorities and extension systems interact, which is precisely the kind of outcome that only an institutional analysis can explain.

3Theoretical foundations

Fondements théoriques

Four bodies of scholarship each explain part of the problem. None, on its own, explains why programmes fail to close it.

3.1 Legal pluralism and land

Pluralisme juridique et foncier

In Nigeria, as across much of Africa, more than one legal order governs the same land. Griffiths (1986) defined legal pluralism as the presence in a social field of more than one source of binding rules, and Nigeria is a textbook case. The Land Use Act of 1978 vests land in each state governor in trust for the people and was intended to create a uniform statutory regime. In practice, customary tenure continues to govern the allocation, use and inheritance of most rural land, and customary rules commonly vest control in male household heads and lineage elders (Aluko & Amidu, 2006). A woman may hold a statutory right that her community does not recognise. A programme that works only through statute will find that its gains stop at the boundary of the family farm.

3.2 Polycentric governance

Gouvernance polycentrique

Ostrom (2010) showed that complex resource systems are often governed most effectively not by a single centre but by many centres of decision-making, each with real authority, that coordinate through rules they recognise in common. Her work explains why top-down programmes frequently fail where local institutions hold effective authority. It does not, however, specify how a development programme should deliberately assemble such a configuration when the relevant centres derive their authority from different and sometimes competing sources.

3.3 Traditional authority as a development broker

L'autorité traditionnelle comme intermédiaire du développement

A growing literature treats traditional rulers not as relics but as active participants in development. Baldwin (2016) shows that in democratic Africa, chiefs often strengthen rather than weaken the delivery of public goods, because they hold durable local legitimacy and can coordinate communities in ways that elected officials cannot. The same authority, however, can entrench existing hierarchies, including hierarchies of gender. Engaging traditional rulers is therefore necessary but not sufficient: the terms of engagement determine whether their authority is used to open access or to defend the status quo.

3.4 Feminist institutionalism and empowerment

Institutionnalisme féministe et autonomisation

Feminist institutionalism directs attention to the formal and informal rules that structure women’s opportunities, and warns that consultation without decision-making power reproduces the tokenism that has characterised much gender mainstreaming (Mackay et al., 2010). Kabeer (1999) defines empowerment as the expansion of the ability to make strategic life choices, through resources, agency and achievements together, and Agarwal (1994) established independent land rights as central to women’s economic security. Together these works show that what matters is not whether women’s organisations are present, but whether they hold defined powers.

3.5 The gap these literatures leave

La lacune laissée par ces travaux

Each literature isolates one register of authority. Legal pluralism explains the collision of statute and custom; polycentric governance explains why multiple centres can outperform one; the literature on chiefs explains the conditional value of customary authority; feminist institutionalism explains why women’s formal power matters. What is missing is a concept that treats these registers together, as a single design problem for a programme, and that tells a designer, a funder or an evaluator when the problem has been addressed. Section 4 proposes such a concept.

4Sovereign institutional multiplicity

La multiplicité institutionnelle souveraine

4.1 Definition

Définition

We define sovereign institutional multiplicity as a programme configuration in which institutional actors deriving authority from four distinct sources are each formally activated within a single governance architecture. The four sources, which we call registers, are set out in Table 1. We call them sovereign not because each is a state, but because each is the final source of authority over a part of the problem: no other register can override it within its own domain.

Table 1. The four registers of sovereign institutional multiplicity
RegisterSource of authorityConstraints it governs
ConstitutionalThe federal and state governments, through executive, legislative and budgetary powerBudget allocation, statutory land law, extension systems, public credit schemes
CustomaryTraditional rulers and lineage institutionsAllocation and inheritance of rural land, community norms, social sanction
InternationalMultilateral mandates, notably the African Union through AUDA-NEPAD and the CAADP framework, and the United Nations systemDevelopment finance, continental targets, accountability that outlasts electoral cycles
Civil societyOrganised associations of women with recognised representative standingMobilisation, voice of beneficiaries, accountability of implementers to women

4.2 Activation, not attendance

Activation, et non simple présence

The concept would be empty if it were satisfied by a crowded launch ceremony. We therefore distinguish formal activation from presence. A register is formally activated only when four conditions hold: there is a written mandate or instrument that names the actor’s role; the role is specific, stating what the actor will decide or deliver; the actor has committed a resource or a decision, such as land, budget, personnel or a rule change; and there is a line of accountability through which failure to deliver can be identified. A register that meets some but not all conditions is partially activated. These criteria make the concept observable and its claims open to challenge.

4.3 How the concept differs

Ce qui distingue le concept

SIM differs from polycentric governance in two respects. It is deliberate rather than emergent, describing a configuration that a programme assembles; and it spans different kinds of sovereignty rather than different levels of one. It differs from the familiar multi-stakeholder partnership because it is defined by the sources of authority engaged rather than by the number of partners, and because it requires formal activation in every register. A partnership of fifty organisations drawn from a single register does not meet the definition; a partnership of four actors, one formally activated in each register, does.

5Research design

Méthodologie de la recherche

The study is a single, theory-building case study (Yin, 2018) of the YWA programme at the point of launch. The case was selected because it was designed explicitly to engage all four registers, which makes it suitable for developing a concept and for identifying the conditions under which full activation can be achieved.

Four sources of evidence were used. The first was the programme’s design and governance documents (UNESCO REF, 2026), including the instruments through which each partner accepted its role. The second was the recorded proceedings of the national launch at the Maryam Babangida National Centre for Women Development, Abuja, comprising the addresses and statements of senior figures from the federal government, the United Nations system, NEPAD_EY, traditional institutions and POWA. The third was the record of community mobilisation in the pilot Local Government Areas during 2026, including the remarks of prospective beneficiaries at mobilisation meetings. The fourth was published secondary data, drawn only from primary sources: the National Bureau of Statistics, the Cadre Harmonisé, the World Food Programme, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.

The launch proceedings and mobilisation records were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2019). Programme documents were coded deductively against the four activation criteria in Section 4.2, register by register, and the resulting assessments were checked against the launch proceedings. The study was reviewed by the UNESCO REF Research Ethics Panel (reference UNESCO-REF-REP-2026-001), and remarks from mobilisation meetings are reported anonymously, with consent.

Both authors hold roles in the programme. This gives access to evidence that an outsider could not obtain, but it creates an obvious risk of favourable interpretation. Three safeguards were adopted: the activation criteria were fixed before the documents were coded; the analysis reports registers that are only partially activated, not only those that are complete; and the manuscript was handled by an independent editor under the journal’s conflict-managed procedure. Readers should nonetheless treat the findings as an inception-stage analysis by participants, to be tested by independent evaluation.

6The architecture of the YWA programme

L'architecture du programme YWA

The YWA programme and the associated twelve million mobilisation campaign were launched jointly in Abuja in 2026. The programme is organised in three phases: a pilot in twelve Local Government Areas spread across the six geopolitical zones; scaling to all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory; and continental adoption through AUDA-NEPAD. The analysis below takes each register in turn and is summarised in Table 2.

6.1 Constitutional register

Registre constitutionnel

The programme is anchored in the federal executive, with the participation of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security and the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs. Executive anchoring matters because the gaps described in Section 2.4 arise from the interaction of several ministries and budget lines; only an authority above any one ministry can coordinate them. The constitutional register is not yet complete, however. Nigeria’s federal structure places agricultural extension and much land administration with the states, and the protocols that will define cost sharing between federal and state governments have not yet been formalised.

6.2 Customary register

Registre coutumier

Traditional rulers from all six geopolitical zones are integrated as institutional co-sponsors, with commitments on community mobilisation and on facilitating women’s access to land. The significance of this register was put plainly at the launch:

“When the government comes, people wait to see what happens. When the Oba or Emir speaks, people act.”Traditional ruler, North-Central zone, national launch proceedings, 2026

The commitments on land are, at this stage, commitments of principle. The written protocols that will specify how land is identified, allocated and secured for women participants in each pilot area remain to be agreed. Until they are, this register is partially activated.

6.3 International register

Registre international

The programme’s designation under NEPAD_EY places it within the African Union’s agricultural framework. The Kampala Declaration and the CAADP Strategy and Action Plan for 2026–2035, adopted at the African Union’s Extraordinary Summit in Kampala in January 2025, make gender transformation a core commitment of African agricultural policy for the coming decade (African Union, 2025). Anchoring in this framework connects the programme to continental finance and to an accountability structure that outlasts national electoral cycles and changes of minister.

6.4 Civil society register

Registre de la société civile

The Police Officers Wives Association is the programme’s institutional co-partner, joined by the associations of the wives of officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Immigration Service and Road Safety Corps, among others. Their role is not consultative. They hold defined responsibilities for mobilising members as participants, for representing beneficiaries within the programme’s governance, and for reporting on delivery. Women at the mobilisation meetings identified this role as a reason to believe in the programme:

“We have POWA here. Whatever they promise us, POWA will make sure they do it.”Prospective beneficiary, community mobilisation meeting, South-South zone, 2026
Table 2. Activation status of the YWA programme by register, at launch
RegisterWritten mandateSpecific roleResource or decisionAccountabilityStatus
ConstitutionalYesYesFederal: yes. State cost sharing: pendingYesPartial
CustomaryYesYesMobilisation: yes. Land protocols: pendingYesPartial
InternationalYesYesYesYesFull
Civil societyYesYesYesYesFull

Assessed against the four criteria in Section 4.2, using programme documents and the launch proceedings.

6.5 What participants saw

Ce que les participantes ont perçu

Across the mobilisation meetings, women returned to one theme: the programme seemed likely to last. They contrasted it with earlier schemes that had arrived with a single sponsor and departed with it. Explaining the difference, they named the combination of government, traditional and international authority, and the presence of an association they knew. In the terms of this article, they were describing activation across registers. Perceived permanence matters because a woman who expects a programme to disappear will not commit scarce land and labour to it.

7SDG alignment

Alignement sur les ODD

Because the constraints the programme addresses cut across sectors, its intended outcomes do too. Table 3 sets out the alignment of programme components with the Sustainable Development Goals and the indicators against which progress will be reported. Alignment here is a statement of design intent, not of results achieved.

Table 3. Alignment of YWA programme components with the Sustainable Development Goals
GoalProgramme componentIndicators to be reported
SDG 1Agricultural income for women participants; access to finance through partner financial institutions1.1.1 extreme poverty; 1.4.2 secure tenure rights to land
SDG 2Inputs, extension and land security; climate-smart practice2.3.2 income of small-scale producers by sex; 2.4.1 sustainable agriculture
SDG 5Land documentation; formal governance roles for women’s associations5.a.1 women’s ownership of agricultural land; 5.a.2 legal guarantees of land rights
SDG 8Market linkage, value chain integration, digital financial inclusion through The August Project8.3.1 informal employment; 8.10.2 access to financial accounts
SDG 10Targeting of under-served rural communities10.2.1 population below 50 per cent of median income
SDG 12Post-harvest loss reduction; responsible input use12.3.1 food loss index
SDG 13Climate adaptation in training; resilient seed varieties13.3.1 climate change education
SDG 17Coordination across all four registers; AUDA-NEPAD partnership17.17.1 public-private and civil society partnerships

8Propositions and delivery framework

Propositions et cadre de mise en œuvre

8.1 Five testable propositions

Cinq propositions vérifiables

A concept earns its place if it makes claims that could prove wrong. We advance five, framed so that the programme’s own monitoring data and later independent evaluations can test them.

  1. Programmes that formally activate all four registers will retain women participants for longer than programmes that activate fewer, holding resources constant.
  2. Where the customary register is formally activated, women’s secured access to land will rise faster than where it is activated in principle only.
  3. The gender productivity gap that persists after equal endowments, observed in the North by Oseni et al. (2014), will narrow more where the customary and civil society registers are both fully activated.
  4. Programmes anchored in the international register will show greater continuity of funding and staffing across changes of government.
  5. The perceived permanence of a programme, reported by participants, will predict their investment of land and labour in it.

8.2 A five-component delivery framework

Un cadre de mise en œuvre en cinq composantes

For governments and partners wishing to replicate the model under the CAADP 2026–2035 agenda, the analysis yields five components, each tied to the activation criteria.

  • Constitutional anchoring. Endorsement and accountability at the level of the head of government, with written federal-state protocols on cost sharing agreed before scaling.
  • Customary integration. Written commitments from traditional institutions on land identification, allocation and security for women, agreed before launch in each area.
  • International activation. A memorandum with AUDA-NEPAD placing the programme within the national CAADP compact and its reporting cycle.
  • Civil society institutionalisation. Defined powers for women’s associations in design, delivery and evaluation, with seats in governance rather than places in consultation.
  • Cross-register accountability. A monitoring framework that reports, for each register, both programme outputs and institutional change: budget lines created, land protocols signed, rules amended, powers exercised.

9Risks and limits

Risques et limites

The architecture described here carries risks that its designers must manage rather than assume away. Customary authority can be used to admit women to land or to confirm their exclusion, and the same rulers whose endorsement opens a community may protect the interests of those who already control its land. Formal land protocols, monitored through the civil society register, are the safeguard. Associations of officers’ wives have unusual reach and organisational capacity, but their members are not the poorest rural women, and a programme that mobilises through them must reach deliberately beyond their membership. Executive anchoring gives authority but also exposure: a programme closely associated with one administration may suffer when it changes, which is why the international register matters. And full activation is costly in time and negotiation. These costs are justified only if the propositions in Section 8 hold.

The study itself has limits. It examines one programme at launch. Its primary evidence was gathered by participants in that programme. It cannot yet observe outcomes; longitudinal data across the six geopolitical zones will not be available before 2028. The concept of sovereign institutional multiplicity is offered as a framework to be tested, and the propositions are stated so that the test can be failed.

10Conclusion

Conclusion

Nigeria’s gender gap in agriculture costs the country billions of dollars a year and contributes to hunger affecting tens of millions of its people. It has survived four decades of programmes not because those programmes lacked ideas or money, but because each engaged only part of the institutional system that holds the gap in place. The evidence that the gap persists in the North even when women have the same resources as men points to the same conclusion: what must change is not only what women receive, but the rules and authorities that govern what they can do with it.

Sovereign institutional multiplicity names the design that answers this problem, and the activation criteria make it possible to tell whether a programme has achieved it. The YWA programme has achieved it in two registers and is close in the other two. Whether it reaches twelve million women is a question only implementation can answer. What this article establishes is a way of knowing, in advance and in public, whether the architecture needed to reach them is in place.

Declarations

Déclarations

Author contributions
P. A. Ladigbolu-Oranmiyan conceived the study, developed the theoretical framework and wrote the manuscript. E. Egbetokun contributed to data collection, the analysis of the civil society register and the revision of the manuscript. Both authors approved the final version.
Competing interests
P. A. Ladigbolu-Oranmiyan is President of UNESCO REF and National Co-ordinator of the Young Women in Agriculture programme. E. Egbetokun is National President of the Police Officers Wives Association and UNESCO REF National Advocate for the programme. The manuscript was handled by an independent editor under the journal’s conflict-managed procedure.
Funding
The study was supported by the UNESCO REF Research Unit, Abuja. No external funding was received.
Ethics approval
Reviewed by the UNESCO REF Research Ethics Panel, reference UNESCO-REF-REP-2026-001. Remarks from mobilisation meetings are reported anonymously, with consent.
Data availability
The recorded launch proceedings, mobilisation records and programme documents are held by the UNESCO REF Research Unit, Abuja, and are available to bona fide researchers on written request to [email protected], subject to the conditions of participant consent.

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How to cite this article

Ladigbolu-Oranmiyan, P. A., & Egbetokun, E. (2026). The 12 million mandate: Sovereign institutional multiplicity, SDG alignment and the political economy of women’s agricultural empowerment in Nigeria. The REF Review, 1(1), 1–38. https://doi.org/10.67943/refreview.2026.001