The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Office of Transition Initiatives is supporting the training of women, mostly widowed or otherwise made vulnerable by the Boko Haram insurgency, to produce protective face masks to help protect the population from the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria’s conflict-affected northeast.
The training programme being carried out by professional tailors is targeting about 200 women in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, who are to produce 4,000 masks in a week’s time from Ankara, a traditional fabric of the region, to both encourage the use of masks among the general population and increase local production.
According to facts made available to BusinessDay on Saturday by American embassy in Abuja, the colourful wax-print masks being produced are to be in various sizes for adults and children and in various layered designs.
The first set of the masks produced under the programme were presented to the Borno State government for distribution to the public at the popular Monday market in Maiduguri where the use of face masks has been mandated.
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The masks were said to have been given to individuals who visited the market on 27 April, while, on April 23, a delegation of Borno state officials including commissioners of Women’s Affairs and Social development and Transport, and officials from the state Incidence and Prevention Control’s COVID-19 committee visited the women at the vocational training center.
The Government officials during the visit gave approval to the quality of face masks produced, and appreciated the women’s efforts to control the spread of the pandemic.
“We commend this initiative to provide our people with these washable and reusable masks for their health and safety. This program economically empowers widows and vulnerable women during the lockdown, and the masks help encourage people to prevent the spread of coronavirus”, Zuwaira Gambo, Borno’s Commissioner of Women’s Affairs and Social Development, said during the visit.
The training is being implemented through USAID’s Nigeria Lake Chad Basin (NLCB) programme, and it also includes training in production of Ankara shoes and bags, as well as food processing.
NCLB designed the activity well before the COVID outbreak and refocused the training to respond to the urgent pandemic response in Borno. Through additional training, more cohorts of women are expected to produce another 50,000 masks in the coming weeks.
