Alternative Livelihoods

SACA promotes and wants to achieve a win-win situation for both the multinationals and their host communities. SACA’s activities frequently help to restore stakeholders' confidence and sustain the companies’ “social license to operate” in the Niger Delta's difficult business environment, because if the communities are unhappy, the oil companies’ businesses always are frustrated.

Our Interventions

Mobile Phones Repair

Many houses are built by the oil companies in a host community. Most common among them are king’s/chief’s palaces, townhalls, classroom blocks and laboratories. In some cases, such as in Ogboloma community, whole estates are built for people displaced from their ancestral homes by the siting of companies’ facilities such as pipeline Right of Way (ROW). SACA monitors their executions to ensure standards, transparency and accountability, and their completion. SACA has got Agip to finish and equip it’s community health center for Ikarama community which it had abandoned for over 10 years.

Production of Cosmetics & Other Household Items

Cosmetics are also in high demand, especially among the women folk. But besides cosmetics for beauty, there are also antiseptics and other disinfectants needed daily by every home. SACA gets some of the indigent women and youths trained on how to produce these items. The low cost of production, low-level logistics and consequently low time-to-market and low market price help the trainees to beat the competition especially in local communities where many people cannot afford imported products.

Snail Farming

Snail farming is a business that many people undermine. Yet some individuals in Nigeria are smiling to the bank because they are quietly making a lot of money from it. Snails, according to experts from BIODEC and Phico Farms, are in high demand in large quantities in Europe, Asia and even in Africa, because of its value not only for consumption but also for manufacturing of various products. But they are relatively easy and cheap to rear, and don’t require a large area of land or polluted rivers. So, SACA trains some of its beneficiaries on it, as an alternative to their destroyed livelihoods.

Fish Farming

Communities in the Niger Delta complain of deaths and mass migration of fishes and other aquatic lives from their waterways to distant parts of the world not polluted by oil spills. This, they say, has led to the loss of their traditional livelihoods which are predominantly fishing and farming. This fuels anger against the oil companies. But SACA does not believe that bursting pipelines to ‘punish’ oil companies for not listening to their complaints would solve the problems. This only worsens the situation as it destroys more livelihoods. But SACA trains the people on other ways of fishing such as new methods of hatching and fishing in artificial ponds. SACA currently does these in small scales, looking forward to when the oil companies themselves, especially Agip, would fulfil their promises of stepping in to scale up the alternative livelihoods programme for the impacted communities.

Highlights

Skills Acquisition and Empowerment for Women & Youths Impacted by Oil Spills

Cosmetics Production Trainees, 2020

This year’s batch of trainees on Cosmetics and Household items production came from Kolo Creek Cluster. They all attended the compulsory general training on Business Management, but chose to specialise in Cosmetics. SACA provided the kits for them to practice what they had been taught, and they produced various items, showcasing some of them here.

Entrepreneurship Trainees, 2020

Last year, SACA trained 43 persons from Okordia-Zarama Cluster in Entrepreneurship. This year, 50 more from Kolo Creek Cluster were trained. These general training sessions were on Business Management, including Startup, Personnel Management, Book Keeping and Marketing. Like last year’s, the instructors are professionals from BIODEC at Odi.

Kits for Mobile Phones Repair Trainees

One of the trainees in mobile phone’s repair receiving his starter kits from SACA’s staff. This trainee, Azibanason Sample, said SACA had opened his eyes to some hidden treasures and financial independence through this training. Recall that SACA had, last year, also got 2 other persons from Kalaba community in Okordia-Zarama trained and equipped in this business.

Snail Pen for Snail Farming Trainees

SACA has extremely meagre funding for the alternative livelihoods program. But, with much frugality, it has still offered several incentives to individuals and groups who did well in practicing their skills. One of them is building a snail pen for them. This is Ukamaka of SACA and the paramount ruler of Kalaba community inspecting one such pen built by SACA.

We work with duty bearers to serve the society better

Programs & Activity Briefs

Alternative Livelihoods
Victims of the 2022 Flood Disaster in Nigeria Receive Support to Uphold their Rights to Sustainable Livelihoods

Stakeholders Alliance for Cooperate Accountability (SACA) commissioned and flagged off the distribution of cassava stems and plantain suckers to 1092 farmers in Bayelsa State, Nigeria.  …

Read More →
Alternative Livelihoods
Entrepreneurship Training for Impacted Host Community Women and Youths

SACA organized a two days entrepreneurship workshop for rural youth and women of Kalaba community in Okordia-Zarama Cluster, on the 4th and 5th of February, …

Read More →
Alternative Livelihoods
SACA Inaugurates Three Project Management Committees in Bayelsa State, Nigeria.

SACA in partnership with Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) inaugurated three Project Management Committees to implement their joint project, titled, “Protect, Respect and Remedy – …

Read More →
Alternative Livelihoods
Trainees Graduate from Practical Trainings and Apprenticeships

On 20th March, 2019, SACA conveyed 8 beneficiaries of our alternative livelihood program from Kalaba community to Yenagoa and trained them on Welding/Fabrication, Cosmetics and …

Read More →

Activity Showcase

Our Partners