|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Across emerging markets, the rising prominence of women-led enterprises has become a signal of structural economic change. In Nigeria, that shift is unfolding at scale. Women now account for one of the country’s fastest-growing entrepreneurial cohorts, building businesses across manufacturing, agriculture, technology, digital services, retail and the creative economy.
The expansion, however, masks a persistent imbalance. Access to finance remains constrained, even as women-owned firms demonstrate resilience and growth potential in an economy grappling with inflationary pressure, currency volatility and tightening credit conditions. For policymakers and lenders alike, the question is no longer whether women entrepreneurs matter to growth, but whether financial systems are evolving quickly enough to support them.
Against this backdrop, the 2025 Women in Business Initiative (WIBI) Summit, hosted in Lagos by FSDH Merchant Bank, examined how targeted capital is being deployed to unlock the next phase of women-led enterprise growth.
A large market, structurally underserved
Nigeria’s female entrepreneurship rate is among the highest globally. According to Mastercard’s 2025 Empowerment for All report, 83 per cent of Nigerian women identify as entrepreneurs, well above the regional average across Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Yet participation has not translated into proportional access to capital. Only about 23 per cent of women-owned businesses in Nigeria have access to formal MSME credit. The African Development Bank estimates Africa’s gender financing gap at $42bn, reflecting structural barriers ranging from collateral requirements and short loan tenors to conservative credit risk models and limited access to networks.
The implications extend beyond gender equity. Women-run enterprises play an outsized role in household income stability, community reinvestment and micro-level job creation. Economists increasingly frame the financing gap as a growth constraint rather than a social issue, particularly in economies seeking diversification and productivity gains.
WIBI as a financing platform
FSDH’s Women in Business Initiative has positioned itself within this emerging logic. Over five years, the programme has evolved into a structured platform combining credit, partnerships and business development support for women-led enterprises.
Since inception, the bank has disbursed more than ₦3bn (approximately $3.9m) in financing to women-owned businesses. The facilities range from long-term loans with flexible repayment structures to working capital lines and short-term, collateral-light credit products designed for firms without fixed assets.
Crucially, much of the lending has been enabled through risk-sharing partnerships with institutions including the Bank of Industry, IFC-backed gender programmes, the AFAWA guarantee framework and WEAV Capital. These arrangements allow for blended finance structures that reduce downside risk while extending credit to early-stage and growth-oriented enterprises typically excluded from conventional lending.
Read also: FSDH’s WIBI Summit: Celebrating women’s resilience, ingenuity
Beyond credit: building investable firms
FSDH’s approach reflects a broader shift in development finance thinking: capital alone does not scale businesses without parallel investment in capability.
Through partnerships with organisations such as the Enterprise Development Centre, IFC and WEAV Capital, WIBI has embedded structured capacity-building programmes focused on financial literacy, governance, investor readiness and leadership development. More than 500 women-led SMEs have completed formal training programmes, while over 2,000 participants have engaged through summits, coaching cohorts and accelerators.
The objective is to convert high-participation entrepreneurship into bankable, growth-ready enterprises, an outcome that benefits both borrowers and lenders.
A spotlight on the creative economy
One notable focus at the 2025 summit was Nigeria’s creative economy, a sector valued at more than $7bn and increasingly visible in global markets. Women play a central role as producers, designers, content creators and cultural entrepreneurs, yet financing remains limited.
Traditional lenders often view the sector as high-risk, citing irregular cash flows and informal revenue models. The result is a financing mismatch for women creatives whose businesses require patient capital and repayment structures aligned with project-based earnings.
In her keynote address, veteran actress and producer Joke Silva argued for deeper skills development and sector-specific financial products that recognise the creative economy as a serious employment and export engine. FSDH signalled that tailored creative-industry financing is likely to feature more prominently in its 2026 agenda.
Why gender-focused finance is macro-relevant
The case for gender-intentional finance is increasingly framed in macroeconomic terms. IMF research suggests Nigeria’s GDP could rise by as much as 23 per cent if gender gaps in labour participation and economic inclusion were closed.
Women-run businesses also tend to show higher repayment discipline and greater reinvestment in education and community welfare, factors that strengthen household resilience in volatile economic environments. For banks, the implication is that well-designed gender-focused products can align social outcomes with risk-adjusted returns.
Scaling the model
FSDH’s next challenge is scale. Expanding impact will require deeper capital pools, more sector-specific financial products and improved data on women-led enterprise performance. Priority sectors identified include agribusiness, healthcare, digital commerce and the creative industries.
As Nigeria’s economy continues to diversify, the effectiveness of its financial system will increasingly be judged by how well it allocates capital to productive but underserved segments. Women-led enterprises sit squarely within that equation.
If the next decade of growth is to be broader-based and more resilient, targeted capital, deployed with discipline rather than sentiment, may prove decisive. In that sense, initiatives like WIBI are less about niche inclusion and more about the mechanics of long-term economic competitiveness.
