32,420 Kwara Girls Receive ₦40,000 Scholarships Under AGILE

A total of 32,420 adolescent girls in Kwara State have received ₦40,000 each as conditional cash transfers under the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) project.

The Kwara AGILE Project Coordinator, Adeshina Salami, disclosed this in an interview with LEADERSHIP, adding that beneficiaries were also receiving training in life skills, digital literacy and vocational skills.

He said the programme was designed to strengthen girls’ education and ensure that female students remained in school and completed their education.

Salami said the initiative targeted female students in both public and private schools across the state.

Also speaking, the Deputy Project Coordinator of Kwara AGILE and System Strengthening Sub-component Lead, Lawal Hamzat Adisa, said the project was introduced to address challenges including unwanted pregnancies, early marriages and high dropout rates among adolescent girls.

He said enrolment among girls aged between 10 and 20 had been low, while the fertility rate among adolescent girls was above 70 per cent.

“However, with AGILE involvement, the enrolment rate is now increasing,” he said.

Adisa, however, stressed the need for sustainable measures to ensure the programme’s gains were maintained after the intervention ended.

He said the state government needed to sustain efforts to address the challenges that prompted the initiative and ensure that girls completed secondary school without falling behind their male counterparts.

“To sustain Kwara AGILE, we have now domesticated the national policy and we now have Kwara State Policy on Gender in Education,” he said.