- The World Bank financed, Community-Based Sahel Recovery and Stabilization Project (PCRSS), aims to improve the lives of conflict-affected displaced populations and host communities across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. In Niger, it focuses on the Tillabéri region — home to roughly 246,774 internally displaced persons, or 45% of the national total.
- More than 257,000 people have already benefited from improved socioeconomic services, including clean water, agricultural support, and community infrastructure. Over 32,000 people have directly benefited from community-level water investments, with solar-powered boreholes and modern distribution points.
- The project has also created temporary employment opportunities through labor-intensive public works, benefiting more than 2,210 youth, while over 75,754 farmers have received agricultural inputs to rebuild their livelihoods.
“My daughters never went to school — not because they didn’t want to, but because they couldn’t,” said Hadiza Mahamadou, 52, a mother of six from a village in Niger’s Tillabéri region. “Every morning, before the sun was even fully up, they were already walking. Walking for water.”
Tillabéri, a vast region in western Niger at the crossroads of the tri-border zone between Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso is a land of resilience and hardship. For years, escalating insecurity has displaced tens of thousands of families, overwhelming communities whose infrastructure was already stretched to the breaking point. Women and girls bore the heaviest burden: walking for hours under the relentless Sahel sun with empty jerrycans to reach water points that were often unsafe and overcrowded.
“We knew the water wasn’t clean,” Hadiza recalled. “But what choice did we have? You cannot let your children go thirsty.”
The Community-Based Sahel Recovery and Stabilization Project (PCRSS), financed by the World Bank and implemented across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, is grounded in a simple but powerful conviction: lasting peace and recovery cannot be achieved through short-term humanitarian assistance alone. They require sustained investment in communities themselves—in the infrastructure they rely on, the livelihoods that sustain them, and the social ties that hold them together.
The project reflects the World Bank Group’s broader SP500 commitment, a global pledge to extend social protection to 500 million poor and vulnerable people by 2030, with a particular focus on women and populations living in fragile and conflict-affected settings.
In Tillabéri the project is installing solar-powered water systems and modernizing distribution points across conflict-affected and host communities alike, offering something rare in this context: reliability.
The results are tangible. As of May 2026, the project has reached 257,069 beneficiaries, including women, youth, and internally displaced persons. More than 32,000 people have directly benefited from water investments. Over 75,754 farmers have received agricultural inputs to restart their livelihoods, and more than 9,293 households received essential goods during the most acute phase of the crisis.
“Water is life, but clean water is health and hope,” said one community member. “Today, our children can drink without fear.”
For Hadiza, clean water marked a turning point. With hours reclaimed from the daily trek, she began farming a small plot near her home and joined a women’s agricultural group supported by the project, gaining access to seeds, tools, and training.
“Before, I had no time,” she said. “Now I have a little income of my own. My youngest daughter is in school. That is something I never thought I would say.”
Nearby, 38-year-old Ramatou Idé faced a different dimension of the same crisis. Having fled violence with her family, she arrived in a host community with almost no assets and limited opportunities. Earning a living proved difficult, but restoring stability, confidence, and dignity was an even greater challenge.
Through PCRSS’s labor-intensive public works program, Ramatou secured temporary employment rehabilitating a community health center — her first formal work experience.
“I didn’t expect much,” she said. “But the work gave me money, yes — and also something else. It gave me a reason to get up in the morning. A reason to feel useful.”
With her earnings, Ramatou began selling small goods at a roadside stall, reinvesting her profits carefully. Today, her stall stocks household items and produce from local farmers — including vegetables grown by women like Hadiza.
Beyond individual stories, the scale of job creation through the labor-intensive (HIMO) approach reflects a deliberate strategy to put cash in the hands of youth while rebuilding communities from the ground up. Through community-based targeting, where communities help identify those most in need, 2,210 young people have been recruited for works ranging from the rehabilitation of 77 school infrastructures and 7 administrative buildings to the construction of 200 family latrines, 7 vaccination parks, and the development of 11 hectares of irrigated farming perimeters near Filingué.
Contracts ran between two and six months — long enough to provide a foothold, a record of contribution, and earnings many chose to reinvest. In a region where displacement has eroded a sense of purpose among young people, this model offers more than infrastructure. It offers a stake in recovery.
Back in Hadiza’s village, the story did not end with a single harvest. She has expanded her plot and begun supplying a small cooperative, dreaming of selling her produce at the regional market.
“Our land is fertile,” she said, looking out across the dry but resilient Sahel landscape. “It just needed water. And so did we.”
read more: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2026/07/20/water-hope-and-new-beginnings-women-rebuilding-lives-in-niger-s-tillaberi-region
