Our History

Nuru identifies countries and communities on the basis of strengths and needs, the ability to work with local stakeholders while maintaining safety, and local demand, buy-in, and ownership. In terms of need, Nuru’s vision is to work at the intersection of extreme poverty, vulnerability and fragility. Extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in fragile states, which are characterized by fragmentation along the lines of cohesiveness, economics, social and political dynamics. Food insecurity and violent dynamics further punctuate these landscapes over time, aggravating stress and conflict into emergency and catastrophe. Nuru specifically seeks to intervene in countries and regions experiencing stress and crisis levels of need, in order to keep the next stressor from pushing these areas into emergency or catastrophic circumstances. Nuru champions community-based and locally-led development that ties marginalized rural areas into the greater region and economy.

Nuru equips farmers to move from subsistence farming to farming as a business through formal agribusinesses. Through their Nuru-supported agribusinesses, farmers are equipped with the training and resources to diversify their crops and increase their crop yields through climate-smart agriculture practices. Additionally, farmers gain access to reliable offtakers (markets) for their produce. With increased yields and reliable markets, farmers are able to increase their income. This increased income is critical to farmers living in extreme poverty. As farmers are better positioned to cover necessary household expenses and save for future unexpected financial shocks, their resilience increases and they begin to chart a path toward prosperity.

Nuru-supported agribusinesses are farmer-owned and maintained multi-purpose cooperatives that make measurable progress toward financial sustainability, efficient management, and strong leadership. Cooperative agribusinesses provide socio-economic benefits to their community with a foundation based on the seven cooperative principles.

Resilience is the capacity of a system or person to withstand or recover quickly from a shock. Especially while working in vulnerable and marginalized communities, Nuru cannot unlock economic potential without building resilience to shocks and stressors experienced by the local community. Much of the resilience is context-specific to the areas in which Nuru works. For instance, while one community may be primarily concerned with instability due to violence, another area may experience relative peace, but widespread drought. Communities often experience a combination of many different stressors all at once. To learn more about how Nuru measures its impact on resilience capacities, please see the Nuru Nigeria Resilience Study.

By ensuring rural people have the opportunity to act on their knowledge, skills and abilities, Nuru supports their journey in achieving their unique economic potential. Economic potential is the capacity to produce goods and services. As an entrepreneurship-promoting organization, Nuru promotes the perspective that financial gains must be bounded by environmental, social and economic responsibility. Nuru believes in an optimistic world where human ingenuity and collaboration contribute to shared prosperity. Nuru works to provide an enabling environment, through business development services and training that remove barriers for youth, women and marginalized populations, equipping them to tap into their vast economic potential.

The Sahel is a region in Africa. The boundaries of this region are debated based on agroecological and political zones; however, IFAD recognizes the Sahel as a region that includes portions of the following countries: Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria. To the north, these countries are borded by the Sahara Desert, while the southern border is comprised of humid savanna regions. The Sahel has faced significant impacts of climate change, including desertification, flooding, and biodiversity loss. The region is also especially vulnerable to the threat of growing instability, as violent extremist organizations (VEOs) become a growing presence in the area. The instabilities in the Sahel have far-reaching consequences, as this area has the ability to destabilize other regions.