The World Bank’s Task Team Leader for the Nigeria for Women Programme Scale-Up Project, Michael Ilesanmi says economic empowerment initiatives targeting Nigerian women must confront restrictive social norms that limit their choices, participation and control over resources.
Speaking at the programme’s side event at the 2026 Social Norms Conference in Abuja, Ilesanmi said interventions would not deliver lasting results if the social barriers holding women back remained unaddressed.
“We cannot economically empower a woman without addressing the norms that have held her back in the first place.” he said
Like the exclusion of women from economic opportunities to “flying a two-engine aeroplane on one engine”, he warned that Nigeria could not achieve its full development potential while women remained economically constrained.
Ilesanmi recounted a community where engagement helped overturn restrictions on women owning mobile phones.
“If we can change one per cent, just one per cent of mindset, it’s way better than having 100% of a beautiful policy document,” he said, urging development partners to collaborate rather than compete.
The programme’s National Project Coordinator, Dr Hadiza Maina, said the scale-up, backed by a 540 million dollar financing envelope, was being implemented in 32 states, targeting five million rural women.
She said the programme had established 86,000 Women Affinity Groups with 1.8 million members, mobilised 22 billion naira in savings, disbursed 2.4 billion naira in Community Investment Funds across three states and supported 302 livelihood collectives.
Maina stated that the Women Affinity groups enable women to save, access loans, develop livelihoods and strengthen their collective voice, while financial and digital literacy, life-skills training and community dialogue tackle barriers beyond access to finance.
She said the scale-up builds on a pilot implemented in six states between 2018 and 2023, with three key components: institutional strengthening; livelihoods and finance; and project management, evidence and learning.
Looking ahead, Maina said the programme would deepen engagement with men, traditional and religious leaders, community champions and media platforms, while strengthening evidence and policy dialogue to sustain changes in household and community behaviour. The scale-up phase is scheduled to run through 2028.
Pilot evaluation findings, she added, showed participating women were more likely to save, while reported physical and sexual violence declined by four and three percentage points respectively.
The impact was reflected in the experience of Salome Ekanem, a beneficiary from Akwa Ibom State, who said joining a Women Affinity Group in 2022 helped her move from financial dependence to running a tailoring business, returning to school and asserting her inheritance rights over family land.
“I am a student, a landowner, a fashion designer, a woman to rely on financially and in decision-making,” she said, adding that her husband now shared domestic responsibilities and supported her business.
Earlier, the Director of Economic Services at the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Musa Aliyu Musa said access to grants, skills and markets would not guarantee empowerment where women lacked control over income and household decisions.
“Norms are not fixed. People made them, and people can remake them,” the director said.
The side event also sought wider participation in developing a national social norms and edutainment strategy, with Ilesanmi inviting partners to contribute to consultations ahead of its planned rollout across 32 states and at the national level.
