Nigeria’s Development Aid to Neighbouring Countries: Assessing the Scope and Impact of South-South Assistance

This study examines Nigeria's provision of development assistance to its immediate neighbours and other African states, assessing the scope, institutional mechanisms, and development impact of what may be termed Nigeria's South-South aid programme. Nigeria provides assistance in various forms including technical cooperation, food aid, scholarship programmes, and capacity-building initiatives, primarily channelled through the Technical Aid Corps (TAC) scheme administered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Drawing on South-South cooperation theory and the concept of emerging donor behaviour, this research analyses the scale, sectoral distribution, and recipient countries of Nigeria's official development assistance from 2019 to 2024. The study employs a qualitative methodology, drawing on Ministry of Foreign Affairs annual reports, TAC programme evaluations, interviews with returned corps members, and comparative data from recipient country governments. The research focuses specifically on assistance provided to Ghana, Benin Republic, and Sierra Leone as illustrative case studies representing different geographic and development contexts. Findings are expected to show that Nigeria's development assistance is modest in scale, institutionally fragmented, and weakly evaluated, limiting its strategic foreign policy utility. The research contributes to the literature on African development cooperation and provides recommendations for strengthening Nigeria's official South-South cooperation framework. Keywords: development aid, South-South cooperation, Nigeria, Technical Aid Corps, African diplomacy.