Nigeria’s Indigenous Biodiversity Knowledge systems (IBKs) constitute a fundamental fabric of life as foods, medicines and livelihoods for more than 40% of the population.

Empirical and anecdotal evidence from Bioresources Development and Conservation (BDCP)’s 32-years’ experience harnessing IBK to improve health outcomes and livelihoods, through bioinnovations, within an organic collaborative community, and management of the Covid-19 pandemic in Nigeria, support the vital role of biodiversity in health, where, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, the expected mass casualty rates from the global pandemic simply did not materialize.

However, this pivotal resource continues to be disconnected from the formal economy and loses its potential as a force multiplier for innovation, enterprise, health and sustainability. The result is high disease burden and endemic poverty, estimated at 38.9% in 2023, with 87 million below the poverty line and the situation has become urgent and critical with potential of generating a destabilizing centrifugal effect on the West African region.

The Nigeria BRIDGE project seeks to avert this possible slide into crisis of unimaginable proportion by scaling up the BDCP’s multifunctional, multimodal and participatory Indigenous Biodiverssity Knowledge Continuum platform to facilitate the development of 122 standardized biodiversity-based health products, establishment of community co-managed village Health Kiosks and emergence of 100,000 bioentrepreneurs in a new eco-digital economy that will impact the health and livelihoods of 20 million Nigerians over five years.

Subsequently, the project will facilitate the emergence of a new ecosytam based on two-eyed seeing bio-innovation interface between health, the environment and sustainable livelihoods.