When India launched the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) in 2011, under the Ministry of Rural Development, it did so with an ambitious objective: to tackle multidimensional poverty by enabling rural households to access gainful employment and sustainable livelihoods through self-employment, financial inclusion, and learning new skills.

Now, 15 years later, the programme’s scale, endurance, and outcomes have exceeded even its early champions’ expectations. Over 20 million women members of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) earn over ₹1,00,000 in income, and women banking correspondents are present in over 60% of local governments. Further, over 50 million women have accessed bank credit, boosting female labour force participation since 2018.

Remarkably, the NRLM has crossed borders, guiding rural livelihood initiatives across the Global South, particularly in Africa, and is subtly shaping India’s development diplomacy.

India’s quiet transformation

The magnitude of the NRLM’s achievements is striking. As of mid-2025, the mission is active in 742 districts; has reached over 100 million households; mobilised more than nine million SHGs; facilitated ₹51,368 crore in capitalisation support; and enabled bank linkages amounting to ₹12 lakh crore, an expansion unprecedented in both scale and its focus on women. The Union Budget 2026-27 strengthened this trajectory with a ₹19, 200 crore allocation, reaffirming the NRLM as India’s flagship programme for rural poverty alleviation. What sets the NRLM apart is not only its breadth but the ecosystem it has nurtured. It has created federated community institutions at the village, cluster, and block levels; established community-based cadres delivering last-mile services; and embedded rural women in formal financial systems. Such a combination of social mobilisation, institutional architecture, and access to credit and skills has made the mission a unique and enduring intervention in global development practice.

Beyond borders

Innovations in development rarely travel easily across borders because they are shaped by local political economies, social structures, and state capacities. Yet the NRLM’s design appears unusually portable. In recent years, a growing number of African governments have begun exploring the Indian SHG-based livelihoods framework. Delegations from Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, Kenya, and Rwanda have undertaken detailed study visits to India, examining not just the outcomes of the NRLM but the operational mechanics that make it work. They sought to understand how India managed to scale SHGs to tens of millions of women; how credit linkages with banks were created and sustained; how communities were mobilised into federations; how trained cadres were deployed at scale; and how accountability and financial discipline were embedded in the system. This surge of interest reflects a wider shift in how countries of the Global South envision development: no longer in terms of Western knowledge templates but through peer learning, centred on contextually relevant and locally rooted innovation.

African policymakers are drawn to the NRLM for several interrelated reasons. First, its focus on women’s collective empowerment resonates strongly with ongoing efforts across Africa to deepen women’s economic participation. The SHG model, built on pooled savings, peer learning, and trust-based credit discipline, offers a structured yet flexible way to strengthen women’s agency. Second, the NRLM’s architecture is cost-effective, relying not on heavy capital investment but on community-driven processes and cadre systems that allow even resource-constrained governments to scale the programme. Third, the model aligns well with the realities of large informal economies across Africa, where livelihood diversification and microenterprise formation are crucial. And finally, the model appeals to these countries because it is an institution-building approach rather than a mere scheme; it strengthens local governance, enhances accountability, and creates long-term community capacity.

India’s emerging development diplomacy

India’s development cooperation has historically emphasised capacity-building, concessional finance, and technical assistance. The dissemination of the NRLM marks a clear evolution — the country is now exporting social-sector institutions grounded in its own developmental experience. Such institutional models create sustained linkages between bureaucracies, implementing agencies, and community organisations, offering a distinct channel for international engagement. They also provide potential entry points for collaboration in digital governance, agriculture, and financial architecture. The NRLM example illustrates how India’s domestic innovations are shaping South-South cooperation by circulating knowledge and institutional practices rather than resources alone. To build on this momentum, India could institutionalise the sharing of its rural livelihoods knowledge through a dedicated Rural Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Platform, linking state livelihood missions, training institutions, and African governments. Expanded training, longer fellowships, immersion visits and joint pilot projects could help adapt SHG-based initiatives to local contexts.

The NRLM is no longer only India’s story of rural transformation. Growing interest from African nations demonstrates that India can generate solutions that develop livelihoods far beyond its borders. In doing so, New Delhi is shaping a new paradigm for global development.

Veda Vaidyanathan is Fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress. Views expressed are personal.