A new Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Baseline Report launched at the Inclusive Investment Forum in Lagos has exposed a sharp contradiction at the heart of Nigeria’s SME sector: women own nearly 40 per cent of businesses in the country, yet receive a disproportionately small share of formal credit.
The report, presented by the Inclusive Investment Forum, provides the first comprehensive data-driven foundation for measuring and addressing structural financing gaps affecting women-led enterprises in Nigeria.
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The numbers behind the gap
The baseline survey found that only 23 per cent of Nigerian women currently hold bank accounts, compared to 77 per cent of their male counterparts — a gap that fundamentally limits their ability to access formal financial services. Of the approximately 23 million women entrepreneurs operating in Nigeria’s micro-business segment, the vast majority remain outside the formal credit system entirely.
The impact investment community has set a target to deploy $8 billion in inclusive capital by 2035. Data as of May 2026 shows that only $1.25 billion has been mobilised toward that goal, leaving a $6.75 billion shortfall with less than a decade remaining to close it.
Women own four in every ten businesses in Nigeria. That they receive only a fraction of formal credit is not a market outcome — it is a structural failure with direct consequences for employment, economic output, and growth.
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What is keeping women out of formal finance
Muda Yusuf, former Director-General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, speaking at the forum, identified the most significant barriers as lack of physical collateral, unfavourable loan terms, limited awareness of available credit products, and low trust in formal financial service providers. Many women-led enterprises operate in the informal sector, which further restricts their visibility to lenders and their eligibility for conventional products.
Former CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi challenged the private sector directly at the summit, calling out the growing number of female bank CEOs in Nigeria and pressing them to put in place gender inclusion and equality policies as beneficiaries of inclusion themselves.
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What the forum is pushing for
To begin closing the capital gap immediately, the Inclusive Investment Forum introduced enhanced physical and virtual Deal Rooms designed to connect institutional investors directly with women-led enterprises ready to scale. The initiative has already produced initial soft commitments of approximately $250,000 from investors during the forum itself.
Soft commitments are a start. The harder task moving from pledges to deployed capital that reaches businesses on the ground — is where every previous initiative in this space has struggled, and where this one will ultimately be judged.
