Wema Bank has signed a €50 million financing agreement with EIB Global, the development arm of the European Investment Bank, to expand access to credit for small and medium-sized enterprises across Nigeria.
The agreement, signed on 19 June 2026 at Wema Bank’s headquarters in Lagos, marks the first transaction between both institutions and directs at least half of the facility toward youth-owned enterprises and the remaining half toward businesses owned, managed by, or primarily serving women.
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What the facility is designed to do
The financing is backed by the European Union’s Global Gateway programme and aligns directly with Nigeria’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy. It will be deployed through Wema Bank’s existing SME lending infrastructure, giving the bank additional capacity to reach underserved segments of the economy that commercial lending has historically struggled to serve.
EIB Vice President Ambroise Fayolle described the agreement as an important contribution to strengthening youth employment, gender equality, and women’s empowerment in Nigeria. He added that the facility also supports entrepreneurs in adopting best practices in green financing, reflecting EIB’s role as the EU’s climate bank and a key partner of the Global Gateway initiative.
Earmarking 100 per cent of a facility — split equally between youth and women — rather than treating those segments as secondary beneficiaries is a structural commitment, not a headline figure. It changes which businesses actually receive the money.
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What Wema Bank brings to the partnership
Managing Director and CEO Moruf Oseni said the facility enables the bank to deepen its support for underserved segments of the economy, describing it as a remarkable opportunity to scale the bank’s impact further. The agreement builds directly on Wema Bank’s existing track record in SME finance — the institution was named SME Financier of the Year and Best SME Lending Product at the Global SME Banking Innovation Awards 2026 earlier this year, recognition driven in part by the MSME Instant Loan product that processes collateral-free applications in minutes.
EIB has invested approximately €2.3 billion in Nigeria since 1978, supporting projects across transport, climate adaptation, digitalisation, agribusiness logistics, and SME financing. The Wema Bank agreement is the latest in a long-running institutional relationship between European development finance and Nigeria’s private sector, and the first to specifically target the combination of youth entrepreneurship, gender inclusion, and green finance within a single facility.
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The broader context
The deal arrives at a time when Nigeria’s SME credit gap remains one of the most significant structural constraints on economic growth. With commercial lending rates still above 30 per cent and over half of small businesses opting out of formal borrowing entirely, targeted facilities that reach specific underserved segments carry weight beyond their headline figures.
For a young woman starting a business in Nigeria, a credit facility that was specifically designed for her, deployed through a bank with a stated commitment to reaching her, is a materially different proposition than a general SME loan product for which she is technically eligible but practically unlikely to receive.
