Adapt China’s Poverty Lessons, Don’t Copy Them — Maho

Media scholar and public affairs analyst, Dr Austin Maho, has urged Nigeria to adapt lessons from China’s poverty reduction experience to its local realities rather than copy foreign development models wholesale.

Maho made the call at a poverty alleviation workshop organised by the Diplomatic Correspondents’ Association of Nigeria (DICAN) in Abuja, where he examined China’s development experience and its relevance to Nigeria’s efforts to tackle poverty.

He said China’s success in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty offers important lessons for developing countries, but stressed that Nigeria must develop strategies suited to its own political, economic and institutional environment.

According to him, China’s major achievement was driven not by a single programme, but by a combination of strong political commitment, effective leadership, data-driven planning, targeted interventions and coordination across different levels of government.

Drawing from his participation in a Global South conference held in July in Yinchuan, Ningxia Province, China, Maho said discussions focused extensively on China’s large-scale poverty reduction efforts.

He noted that China moved nearly 99 million people out of poverty between 2012 and 2020, while connecting more than 100,000 villages with paved roads as part of its rural development strategy.

However, Maho said Nigeria operates under significantly different conditions, including its federal democratic structure, weaker administrative capacity, economic challenges, data gaps and persistent insecurity.

He warned that development programmes imported without proper adaptation could fail because they do not take local institutions and realities into account.

“The issue is adaptation, not adoption,” he said, urging policymakers to design poverty reduction strategies around Nigeria’s specific circumstances.

Maho identified weak data infrastructure, limited implementation capacity and insecurity as major obstacles that must be addressed for poverty alleviation programmes to succeed.

He also expressed concern over Nigeria’s growing population, saying the increasing number of births continues to place pressure on jobs, infrastructure and public services at a time when the country is grappling with widespread poverty and unemployment.

According to him, poverty reduction should be treated as a national development priority supported by clear targets, reliable data and measurable outcomes.

Maho assigned a crucial role to the media, particularly diplomatic correspondents, in ensuring that international development partnerships translate into tangible benefits for Nigerians.

He urged journalists to go beyond reporting official agreements and project launches to monitoring implementation and evaluating the impact of such interventions.

“Journalists should serve as translators and accountability agents,” he said.

He encouraged media organisations to pay closer attention to sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, digital education and rural development, which have direct implications for poverty reduction and economic empowerment.

Maho also recommended the creation of dedicated development diplomacy beats, stronger investment in data journalism and fact-checking of international development partnerships.

He further called for the development of scorecards to monitor poverty-related indicators across states and local government areas.

According to him, failure to properly contextualise foreign development experiences could lead either to the uncritical promotion of external models or the outright rejection of lessons that could be useful.

“China’s experience offers valuable insights, but Nigeria must develop solutions suited to its own federal, democratic and socio-economic realities,” he said.

Maho maintained that the media must help citizens understand development policies, scrutinise government interventions and hold public officials and development partners accountable for measurable results.

He said greater emphasis on evidence, accountability and local adaptation would enable Nigeria to benefit from successful international experiences without treating any foreign model as a ready-made solution.

The DICAN workshop highlighted the need for stronger links between international development ideas and Nigeria’s domestic policy realities, with journalists expected to play a key role through rigorous reporting, data analysis and sustained public accountability.

By Sophina Ovuike, Abuja 

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