Sustainable livelihoods and decent work are important to the dRPC, given affiliation of one of the dRPC’s founding members served as a former executive of the Nigeria Labour Congress. The development Research and Projects Centre started its work in the area of economic empowerment in the 1990s by designing and running a MacArthur foundation funded capacity strengthen program for livelihood associations. In the 2000s the dRPC was then supported by the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) to research into, document and disseminate the phenomena of women’s health networks leveraging livelihood associations to address health needs. This was under the famed NGO Networks for Health project.

Throughout the 2000s and into this current period, the dRPC has consistently focused on expanding the financing, policy, infrastructural development and skills building space for women and girls in economic empowerment interventions. We have also worked towards strengthen livelihood associations such as women’s empowerment collectives to advocate for expanded access to services. We have also been successful in incorporating economic empowerment into our education programs by supporting the Federal Government’s Secondary School Curriculum Development Agency, the NERDC, to strengthen the entrepreneurship components in the National Senior Secondary School Curriculum. This initiative was implemented under a grant from the MacArthur foundation in the PSIPSE project. The dRPC is currently implementing the Partnership for Advancing Women in Economic Empowerment project (PAWED) with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.