Poverty and malnutrition are persistent problems in Africa. Alleviation of these closely-related socioeconomic
problems must be guided by knowledge of their spatial distribution and relationships to
biophysical and development factors. Two country-wide surveys, one on rural livelihoods, poverty and
food demand, and the other on food consumption and child nutrition, were carried out in Nigeria by
IITA, and the results mapped in order to assist interpretation.The lack of reliable recent census statistics
in Nigeria complicates the process of mapping socio-economic variables. The Small Area Estimation
technique has been adapted for regression of poverty and nutrition indicators against biophysical and
socio-economic variables such as rainfall, soil fertility and travel time to markets and applied to groups
of Nigerian States. Where no significant correlation was observed, values were interpolated
geostatistically. Preliminary maps of poverty and nutrition are presented, and relationships of these
indices to each other and to biophysical and socioeconomic factors is discussed.