Financial Inclusion Today with BusinessDay analysts; Patrick Atuanya, Bala Augie, Lolade Akinmurele and Endurance Okafor, anchored by Lehlé Baldé
According to the World Bank Global Findex Database,Nigeria has a 24 percent financial inclusion gap between the male and female adults in Africa’s largest economy,this implies that the male adults in Nigeria are 24 percent more financially included that the female.
Deliberating on how to include more Nigerian women into the financial circle, considering the widening gap from 20 percent in 2014 to 24 percent in 2017, Ezeugo stressed out ways to better bring in more women into the financial space and cited out ways Accion Microfinance bank (MFB) have contributed to making this a reality.
“Accion MFB started its operation in 2007 with the mission to economically empower micro entrepreneurs and low income earners, and for the past ten years we have seen that we have actually reached more women than men, although the products and services of Accion are not tailored specifically to women, but we have reached more women at about 68 to 70 percent for both savings and loans,” Ezeugo said.
She stressed that when women are economically empowered, the whole family becomes also empowered, as most of their female customers who they have been able to reached out to in the past ten years, their families’ livelihood end up becoming better, with most of their children in school, owing to the fact that there is support from the women in the family. The commercial officer therefore said there is need to ensure more women are financially included.
However, the set 80 percent financial inclusion target by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was seen as unachievable by Ezeugo owing to what she called infrastructural defects which are mainly seen in the rural and not so urbanised areas, as these defects do not allow the financial institutions to operate in those areas.
“For example, we are in 2018 and as such we expect that most of the things we do are digitally controlled but how do you do that when there are no lights in the villages, when there are no touch points, banks are not willing to go these areas, even in Lagos, the semi urban areas of the city do not have banks,” Ezeugo mentioned.
On the way to go in including more Nigerian women into the financial space the guest on the programme, Ezeugo said there is need to bring in more women in the rural areas as they are most affected.
On how they intend to achieve this she said Accion MFB in collaboration with other stakeholders are going into the rural areas especially in the Northern part of the country, putting in mind the cultural and religious challenges in those areas.
In collaboration with Efina, a global financial organisation, Accion MFB plans on using digital means to reach these women in the rural areas, as most of them have access to mobile phones. So without necessarily meeting with all of them in person, they can be reached through their mobile phones and also in the languages they best understand.
This will enable them have access to credit, savings and loans which they can use to finance their small businesses, which in a long run will enable them help and support their families.
On the barriers that hinders women financial inclusion in Nigeria, she cited lack of education, lack of infrastructure, cultural barrier among others and ways to manoeuvre through the challenges, she further stressed on the use of technology like mobile phones as it will create avenue to directly reach out to these women who normally are not allowed by their husbands and culture to do things for themselves.
She concluded by saying there is deep need to bring in more women in the rural areas into the financial circle, as they are the most affected and excluded owing to the lack of infrastructure in those areas and the way to go in achieving this should be for the government to put up more infrastructure in those areas, as this will encourage more commercial banks to have their presence in the areas.
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