Female entrepreneurs urged to embrace loan opportunities and intervention programmes in Nigeria

The minister of finance, budget, and national planning, Zainab Ahmed said the Federal Government has launched some intervention programmes that seek to empower and support women.

Ahmed said this on Wednesday at the Gender and Inclusion Summit organised by the Policy Innovation Center, (PIC), in Abuja, on Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

Ahmed said women are the largest beneficiaries of the FG’s intervention programmes. 

She said: “The federal government of Nigeria has the government enterprise empowerment program; the largest beneficiaries of this program are the women. 

“We have also the ‘conditional cash transfer program’, 93 percent of the caregivers are women.”

Ahmed added that the FG is making conscious efforts to ensure women benefit more from its social intervention programmes. 

She also said her ministry’s budget is also mapped out in a way that will be gender-sensitive.

Speaking during a panelist session at the event, Ms Beatrice Eyong, the UN Women’s representative, disclosed that there are loan opportunities for women in Nigeria.

According to her, there are banks in Nigeria that offer juicy loans to emerging female entrepreneurs.

She said: “We have banks that have credit lines to support female entrepreneurs. 

“For instance, if you look at the activity that we carried out in Niger state, for smart agriculture, it was funded by Stanbic Bank. 

“We have the FCMB bank; they have the “She Ventures”, which have up to 5 million loan opportunities without interest rates, to ensure that women can access finance.” 

Explaining why gaps still exist despite the numerous opportunities available for women in Nigeria, Eyong said more work needs to be done to close the gap.

She said, “First of all, we must know that Nigeria is a very big country. What a smaller country will do may for 8 million or 7 million women; here in Nigeria, we have about 100 million women.

“So, there is work that is being done, but there is still more to be done. We acknowledge the fact that the legal framework is not yet perfect as we want it.”

“But we think that the private sector, the banking sector are showing a good example. For example, they have reserved 30 percent of executive position within that sector, reserved for women.”