Geographic Targeting for Poverty Alleviation in Nigeria: A GIS approach

The scourge of poverty and its resultant negative impact on Nigeria’s economic development has been notably great. The economic recession experienced since the 1980s did wipe out the economic gains of the post-colonial oil boom era of the early 1970s. The government has had to contend with low or negative economic growth, tight fiscal constraints, and external debt burden. This situation has led to the increased use of targeting mechanisms in transferring benefits to the poor. While the importance of geographic targeting (GT) in tackling poverty is well known in literature, the employment of GIS as a tool for effective and efficient GT is relatively unknown. Thus its great potential in relating non-spatial data to its corresponding location on ground and its superb analytical mapping prowess remains widely unutilised. In this pilot study, digital cadastral maps form the spatial database and socio-economic, demographic data of the populace in the selected region form the attribute (non-spatial) database in the Geographic information system for geographic targeting (GTGIS). The focus of the GTGIS project is two dimensional in nature. It is concerned with utilizing GIS for poverty assessment on the one hand and utilizing GIS for geographic targeting on the other hand. This paper is more concerned with the latter, that is, attempting to demonstrate the utilization of GIS in simulating geographically targeted poverty alleviation programmes at household and neighbourhood levels within the city of Ibadan (a World Bank/UNDP, UNCHS (Habitat) “Sustainable Urban Management Programme” case study). The GTGIS project is aimed at making the use of GIS standard for geographic targeting.