The Southwest Development Commission (SWDC) will launch an ₦80 billion rural transformation initiative targeting the Southwest zone.
According to the commission, the initiative will be launched at a summit in Ibadan to be attended by government officials, development finance institutions, and private sector leaders on May 5-6, 2026.
It added that the high-level roundtable, scheduled to hold at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), will formally introduce the Transformed Communities Programme, also known as TransComs, aimed at improving rural livelihoods, boosting employment and developing 137 self-sustaining community economies across the region’s six states.
“The summit represents a critical stage in the programme’s rollout, bringing together, for the first time, policymakers, development financiers and private investors to agree on implementation strategies, funding structures and operational frameworks”, it said.
The SWDC chairman, Olubunmi Adetunmbi, speaking ahead of the event, described the initiative as a major step towards unlocking the economic potential of rural communities.
“TransComs is the most serious attempt in a generation to organise the productive potential of Southwest Nigeria’s rural communities into a coherent economic programme.
“The partners will not be witnesses to a launch, they will be the architects of it,” he said.
Participants at the invitation-only roundtable will include state commissioners from across the Southwest, representatives of federal ministries, and officials from leading development finance institutions such as the African Development Bank.
Other key private sector stakeholders expected at the meeting include potential anchor buyers for agricultural produce and investors in agro-processing and digital infrastructure.
The programme is designed to address long-standing structural challenges in rural economies, particularly the lack of critical infrastructure needed to scale agricultural productivity.
“These include storage facilities, reliable electricity, processing capacity, healthcare services, and access to finance.
“Under the TransComs model, clusters of three to five neighbouring villages, typically with populations ranging from 2,000 to 8,000 will be integrated into single economic units”, the chairman noted.