EFInA capacity-building drive to close Nigeria’s gender finance gap

Enhancing Financial Inclusion and Advancement (EFInA) has intensified efforts to close Nigeria’s gender gap in access to finance through a new capacity-building initiative targeted at financial institutions.

The programme, delivered through EFInA’s Gender Centre of Excellence (GCE); themed “Gender Mainstreaming to Advance Sustainable Portfolio Growth,” is designed to help financial service providers embed gender-responsive strategies across product design, credit processes, customer engagement, and internal decision-making.

EFInA has partnered with selected institutions, including First City Monument Bank, Ecobank, and Parallex Bank, for immersive workshops focused on translating gender inclusion commitments into measurable business practices.

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Emezino Afiegbe, lead of the Gender Centre of Excellence, said the programme aims to align social impact with commercial value.

“This programme is designed to support financial institutions in clearly seeing the opportunity, impact, and commercial value of applying a gender lens to how they design products, processes, and services,” Afiegbe said.

Nigeria has made gradual progress in reducing overall financial exclusion, but disparities persist. EFInA’s Access to Financial Services in Nigeria (A2F) 2023 survey shows that about 21 million adult women remain excluded or underserved by formal financial systems, despite women accounting for nearly half of the adult population and a large share of nano, micro, small, and medium enterprise owners.

Structural barriers such as limited asset ownership, informal income streams, and restrictive social norms are often compounded by institutional practices that unintentionally disadvantage women. These include rigid credit scoring models, collateral-heavy underwriting requirements, and product designs that fail to reflect women’s cash-flow realities and risk profiles.

Afiegbe emphasised that the initiative is designed to help institutions rethink such systems.

“By strengthening institutional understanding of women’s financial realities, we are building practical capacity to serve excluded and underserved women, an addressable market of about 21 million adults in Nigeria,” she said.

EFInA said insights from tools such as its Women’s Economic Empowerment Dashboard will guide participating institutions in developing targeted products and tracking performance, ultimately supporting enterprise growth, job creation, and broader economic productivity.