The International Women’s Day (IWD) this year had as its thene “Accelerate Action”. The theme was meant to emphasize the urgency of making faster strides toward gender equality and calls for swift, decisive action to address systemic barriers and biases. So many organisations in Nigeria and around the world took part actively in the annual event through various programmes and activities.
For the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the commemoration of International Women’s Day provided an important platform for honouring the remarkable strength, diverse talents, and significant achievements of women in Africa’s most populous country and around the world. It particularly described the celebration as a reminder of the vital contributions women make in various fields and encourages continued efforts towards gender equality and empowerment.
As part of this year’s celebration, the Deputy Governor (Corporate Services) of the CBN, Ms. Emem Usoro, presented a paper titled “Accelerating Women’s Financial Inclusion: Unlocking Opportunities for Growth and Investment,” at the Citibank’s inaugural Women in Central Banking event in London, United Kingdom, on March 10, 2025. The forum featured other female Central Bank Deputy Governors from Kenya, Türkiye, Israel, Kazakhstan, and the United Kingdom.
Ms Usoro shared with the August gathering the CBN’s targeted policies and strategies to accelerate women’s financial inclusion and reduce the gender gap in access to finance. She expressed confidence that the CBN’s strategic initiatives, under the leadership of the Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, will drive higher financial inclusion for women and other underserved groups and unlock economic value through entrepreneurship, market participation, and strengthened financial resilience.
“With macroeconomic stabilisation taking hold, the Central Bank is shifting focus to broader financial sector reforms, including financial inclusion – an area of particular importance to Governor Cardoso. Whether for women-led businesses seeking capital, professionals securing their financial futures, or rural communities accessing banking for the first time, inclusion is a catalyst for sustainable growth. It is undeniable that when women thrive, economies prosper and opportunities multiply,” she added.
Ms Usoro also noted that the Nigerian apex bank remains committed to bold, data-driven policies that accelerate access to finance, drive investment and foster a more inclusive, dynamic economy.
She disclosed that the CBN, in collaboration with development partners, conducted an assessment of women’s financial inclusion in Nigeria and established a Gender Desk in its Financial Inclusion Unit in response to the study’s findings, which identified key obstacles such as low trust in financial service providers and limited financial literacy. The study revealed a 9% gender gap in access to finance.
While detailing the challenges faced by the current CBN management team upon taking office, Ms. Usoro outlined a series of critical reforms implemented to realign the CBN with its core mandate.
She listed the launch of the Women Entrepreneurs Finance (WE-FI) Code Commitment, championed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN in collaboration with the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) and the Bank of Industry (BoI); the launch of the Framework for Advancing Women’s Financial Inclusion in Nigeria (FAWFIN) and the inauguration of an inter-agency Special Interventions Working Group with a priority focus on women, as efforts by the bank to promote gender financial inclusion.
Ms. Usoro called on participants at the event to partner with financial institutions to expand credit facilities for women-owned businesses, invest in the fintech ecosystem, particularly in infrastructure that improves access to digital finance, or support capacity-building programmes that enhance women’s financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
Indeed, financial experts have always argued that women empowerment and inclusion in governance is crucial to ending poverty because women form the nucleus of societies. When women overcome inequality, they are able to participate fully in economic and social life, all of which translate to improvement in income and living standards.
As the CBN noted in its Framework for Advancing Women’s Financial Inclusion in Nigeria, “There is widespread evidence of the economic and societal benefits of women’s financial inclusion. Women’s financial inclusion can create greater economic stability and prosperity for women, their families, and their communities, by building assets, enabling the ability to respond to family needs, and mitigating risk. When a woman has access and, just as importantly, control of formal financial products she not only contributes to her own well- being, but also to the well-being of her family.
“When a woman saves in a safe place, she saves for her children’s education, her family’s health and their better housing – building both security and prosperity. With greater security and prosperity, she gains greater economic empowerment…For example, in Kenya, women merchants who opened a basic bank account invested more in their businesses. Female-headed households in Nepal spent more on education after opening a savings account.”
So this has always been a priority for CBN because “Women’s financial inclusion is not only a powerful force in the economy and in society: it is a particularly powerful force. While both men and women benefit from financial inclusion, there is evidence that economic inequality falls more when women have greater access to finance than when men have greater access.”
