The Bank of Industry has signed a $50 million senior loan with the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, to expand long-term financing for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises across Nigeria. The seven-year facility was signed at the Africa Financial Industry Summit 2026 in Luanda, Angola, and forms part of a broader IFC investment package of up to $100 million for the bank.
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What the loan is meant to do
BOI Managing Director Olasupo Olusi and IFC Managing Director Makhtar Diop signed the agreement. At least a quarter of the facility is earmarked for women-owned businesses. Olusi described the deal as a strong vote of confidence in BOI’s mandate, institutional capacity and role in advancing Nigeria’s industrial development. IFC said it is combining financing with local capital-market solutions to mobilise more private capital and expand local-currency funding for MSMEs. The two institutions will now work towards completing the definitive financing documents and the conditions required for implementation.
Local-currency funding matters because most small businesses earn in naira and cannot absorb exchange-rate swings on foreign-currency debt.
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Demand far exceeds supply
The loan arrives as BOI faces a long queue of borrowers. Olusi has said the bank has loan applications worth more than N2 trillion awaiting funding, and that it is exploring cheaper sources of capital, including concessional loans from development finance institutions. He added that BOI would consider another Eurobond only if borrowing costs were competitive.
Vanguard reported that in 2025 the bank’s applications reached N1.754 trillion against available funding of N645 billion, a shortfall of about 63 per cent. Olusi told the same forum that BOI cannot close the gap from its own balance sheet.
At the exchange rate implied by recent reports, the full IFC package of up to $100 million would cover less than 7 per cent of the current queue. The loan is meaningful, but it is a start rather than a solution.
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What it means for small businesses
For SMEs, the seven-year tenor is the most valuable feature. Most commercial loans offered to small businesses are short-term and expensive, and the World Bank estimates that fewer than one in 20 Nigerian MSMEs has access to bank credit. Longer tenors allow a business to buy equipment, build capacity and repay from the returns, rather than refinancing every year.
The real test is speed. A facility that stays in documentation for months does little for a business that needs working capital this quarter, and the women-owned allocation will matter only if it reaches enterprises outside the major cities.
