Development Partners Advocate More Financial Inclusion For Nigerian Women

The African Development Bank Group, AfDB, in partnership with the African Guarantee Fund (AGF), have emphasised the need to increase the financial inclusion of women in Nigeria to enhance its positive impacts on the economy.

At the 5th AFAWA Finance Series held in Lagos, the African Guarantee Fund’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Jules Ngankam, said, “In Africa, 70% of women are excluded financially, including in the areas of access to credit, land ownership, job opportunities, leadership positions and wealth creation. These imbalances have been one of the factors limiting Africa from reaching its full potential.”

Ngankam commended the government of Nigeria for taking steps in promoting women-led small and medium enterprises and noted that the AGF through the AFAWA initiative was eager to collaborate with the government and policymakers to further transform the environment to make it more conducive for women entrepreneurs.

For the AfDB Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development, Dr Beth Dunford, Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises make up more than three-quarters of Nigeria’s workforce and with the right support, they have the potential to accelerate the country’s progress towards its economic development goals.

Also at the event, the Director General for African Development Bank, Nigeria Country Department, Lamin Barrow, said that the Bank’s AFAWA initiative seeks to increase women’s access to finance in the continent by closing the $42 billion financing gap for women-led small and medium enterprises.

“Our goal is to mobilize $5 billion in financing for African women-led businesses by 2026. Since we launched AFAWA a little over two years ago, the initiative has approved $1.2 billion for on-lending to women-led enterprises in 32 countries across Africa, “ Barrow stated.

The AFAWA Finance Series is a component of the African Development Bank’s Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) initiative that showcases the AFAWA Guarantee for Growth program, which offers a risk-sharing mechanism coupled with capacity development assistance to enable financial institutions to increase their appetite to lend to women SMEs.

The Lagos event, follows the AFAWA Finance Series in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana and Angola.

The high-level conference will be followed by a 2-day training that will enable banks to introspect on their product and service offerings through a gender-smart lens and therefore better address the needs of women entrepreneurs.

Olusola Akintonde