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Campaign Budget and Time Frame 215

The ITN campaign was formally launched in April 2002, with imported nets
bundled with insecticide kits and one pretreated ITN; however, this strategy was
upended when President Obasanjo and his cabinet surprisingly voted in July to
increase the tariff on textiles (including nets) to 75%. This virtually ended im-
ports as a source of quality nets. One distributor (one of the largest companies
in the country) was awaiting a shipment of 50,000 ITNs and canceled his order
when the ship was three days from Lagos port—and the manufacturer diverted
the shipment to Togo. That distributor then halted his plans to sell ITNs because
he wanted to market a premium-quality product and did not want to rely on lo-
cally produced nets. Thus, NetMark and Vestergaard Frandsen lost a distributor
with a national distribution network and more than 1,500 delivery vehicles.
To facilitate the use of local nets, NetMark convened a meeting of 24 net
manufacturers, insecticide suppliers, and distributors to foster partnerships
and challenge net manufacturers to increase the quality, quantity, and variety
of their nets. NetMark also presented multicountry data showing the popular-
ity of conical nets, which were not produced in Nigeria. The distributors
noted that their imported conical nets sold very quickly. NetMark offered to
teach the manufacturers how to make conical nets; two distributors offered to
buy them if a local company could produce a quality product. Two manufac-
turers agreed to produce some prototypes if they were provided with samples.
Within six weeks, both manufacturers sent the distributors conical nets.
Within a year, four manufacturers were producing conical nets for the first
time ever in Nigeria. In 2005 and 2007, NetMark involved Nigerian net manu-
facturers in workshops on LLIN production, and in 2008, the largest net man-
ufacturer decided to install an LLIN treatment process developed by NetMark
and started producing LLINs in 2009.

CAM PAI G N B U D G ET AN D TI M E FR AM E

NetMark received approximately US$1 million per year from USAID/Nigeria
with supplemental support coming from the NetMark core budget for re-
gional staff time and the design and production of the initial campaign mate-
rials—radio and TV spots, newspaper ads, and point-of-sale materials. The
time frame for the project changed twice. NetMark was originally timed to
run through September 2004. USAID/Nigeria put funds into NetMark one
year at a time, with verbal commitments to maintain that funding until 2004.
When NetMark was extended to September 2007 and then September 2009,
USAID Nigeria agreed to continue funding its activities. From 2001 to 2008
NetMark received a total of $9,993,250 from USAID/Nigeria (see Table 9-2