Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment


The Federal Government has received a credit from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), for the implementation of the Adolescent Girls Initiatives for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) Project in kano.

AGILE Project seeks to improve adolescent girls' access to secondary education opportunities through a holistic and multisectoral approach to unlock binding demand and supply-side constraints to girls' empowerment in seven states of Nigeria. The project will use secondary schools as a platform to empower girls through education, life skills, health education, GBV awareness and prevention, negotiation skills, self-agency, and digital literacy skills. It is a five-year (5) project, that will work with the Federal Government and support the participating states to improve secondary education opportunities among girls, and to achieve its objectives through targeted assistance following key project principles.

Strategic Objectives

Support the Guidance and Counselling, Reproductive Health, and State Ministry of Women Affairs focal persons within the State PIU to implement a life skills program for adolescent girls in selected schools.

Build the capacity of the SPIU and specifically the Guidance and Counselling Unit of the MoE in each participating MDAs to design, implement and monitor a life skills program for adolescent girls in school.

Review the existing safe space curriculum, to incorporate input from the community.

Support knowledge management and learning agenda of the project to identify best practices including what’s not working to course correct at specific intervals of the project implementation.

Donors & Implementing Partners

Support the Guidance and Counselling, Reproductive Health, and State Ministry of Women Affairs focal persons within the State PIU to implement a life skills program for adolescent girls in selected schools.

Build the capacity of the SPIU and specifically the Guidance and Counselling Unit of the MoE in each participating MDAs to design, implement and monitor a life skills program for adolescent girls in school.

Review the existing safe space curriculum, to incorporate input from the community.

The society for Women Development and Empowerment of Nigeria (SWODEN) is the implementation partner to the Life Skills Component of the AGILE project in Kano State. About 66,240 girls in 100 piloted schools will receive life skills training in safe spaces.


AGILE Kano Targeted Locations

AGILE-supported interventions will reach all 44 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Kano state, and all public Junior Secondary Schools (JSSs) and Senior Secondary Schools (SSSs), while prioritizing targeted areas that are poor and have the lowest secondary transition rates among girls in participating states. The project will benefit all adolescents girls in public secondary schools.

  • Safe Spaces across 44 LGAs
  • Weekly Sessions in 100 Targetd Schools
    • AGILE Project Duration & Beneficiaries

    Duration: 5 years (2020-2025)

    Primary Beneficiaries: Adolescent girls’ ages 10 to 20 years in Kano state, with a strong focus on disadvantaged adolescent girls especially the physically challenged where the intervention is expected to reach 500,000 girls

    Secondary Beneficiaries:
    • Training of 40 mentors to facilitate sessions.
    • Training of 250 “female teacher/ counsellors”