Social investment programmes in Nigeria: Impact and challenges

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of social investment programmes vis-à-vis its impact and challenges in Nigeria. This is with a purpose to engendering their sustainability and dynamics for social development in Nigeria. It relies on secondary data in providing information on the social investment programmes in relation to their outputs and outcomes. It discusses the impacts of social investment programmes, such as generation of employment for the youth, re-prioritisation of agricultural sector, provision of enabling environment and discouragement of ‘brain-drain’. The paper analyses some of the key challenges: policy inconsistency, unwieldy scope of the programmes and inadequate funding and concluded that the acquisition of social investment roles in youth employment is a universal social task of adult social livelihood sustenance. The government is recommended to intensify efforts on social investment programmes for youth employment generation.

KEY TERMS: social investment programmes, youth employment, government and social development, Nigeria