AfDB grants over $1.1 billion to 20,500 Nigerian MSMEs

According to the African Development Bank, it has made interventions totaling more than $1.1 billion for 20,500 micro, small, and medium-sized businesses in Nigeria.

According to the report, this helped create more than 440,000 employment in Nigeria, with women and young people making up 60% of the workforce.

Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, president of the AfDB, made this statement on Thursday in Lagos at the African Small and Medium Enterprise Immersion Fund Roundtable. Adesina was represented by Mr. Lamin Barrow, Director-General of the AfDB’s Nigeria Country Department.

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The Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa, he claimed, had also been launched by the bank.

He said, “In Nigeria, the Bank has 8 active LOCs targeting SMEs valued at $1.1bn. Our interventions have supported over 20,500 MSMEs and have contributed to the creation of over 440,000 jobs, with women and the youth accounting for 60 percent.

“The Bank has also launched the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa as a flagship initiative to close the $42bn access to finance gap for women-led and owned SMEs. Through AFAWA, the Bank will facilitate up to $5bn in credit access to women SMEs by 2026.”

He added that the MSMEs in Nigeria employed roughly 77% of the labor force and were predominately run by women, who had a harder time getting access to affordable finance and non-financial services because of gender biases in property rights that made it harder for them to use collateral for loans.

He added that a variety of issues, including MSMEs’ limited access to inexpensive financing, views of their high default risk due to key man concerns, information asymmetries, and other issues arising from their informal nature, had hampered their growth.