FINANCIAL INCLUSION AND NORTHERN WOMEN

The women need some form of empowerment

The Aminu Kano Centre for Democratic Studies at Bayero University, Kano recently released a report that should keep every northern governor awake at night. Supported by the Gates Foundation, the study, ‘Understanding Influence and Behaviour in Northern Nigeria,’ reveals that 38 per cent of women across the region are completely excluded from financial services. That means nearly four in every 10 women in a region of 19 states have no bank account, mobile money wallet, insurance, and microfinance facility. They exist entirely outside the formal financial system. In a country that talks endlessly about inclusive growth, that is an indictment.

The financial exclusion of northern women is a governance failure with real consequences. A woman who cannot save cannot plan. A woman who cannot access credit cannot grow her trade beyond subsistence. A woman without insurance is one illness away from destitution. While 52 per cent of northern women are classified as financially served, only 45 per cent access formal services through deposit money banks, merchant banks, interest-free banks, and microfinance institutions. The rest make do with informal arrangements or nothing at all. And this is happening in a region where, according to the same report, unemployment stands at 37 per cent and poverty levels average around 80 per cent, with Sokoto State recording the highest rate.

According to Ismael Zango, the principal investigator of the study, economic empowerment must go beyond token gestures, the kind of one-off cash handouts that politicians distribute during campaigns and promptly forget about. Sustainable development requires equipping women and youths with market-driven skills. He pointed to women-led groundnut processing cooperatives in Kebbi State and the Women in Agriculture programme in Kano as models worth scaling. These are things already working on the ground, waiting for institutional support that never quite arrives.

In its Framework for Advancing Women’s Financial Inclusion launched in 2020, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) set ambitious targets, and nationally, the gender gap in mobile money account ownership has narrowed. But aggregate statistics can make policymakers feel good while the reality on the ground remains grim. The mobile money gender gap in rural Nigeria stands at 35 per cent, compared to 16 per cent in urban areas. Since most excluded northern women live in rural communities, the progress being celebrated at conferences in Abuja is largely passing them by. Meanwhile, social norms continue to restrict women’s mobility, access to identification documents, and even their ability to own a mobile phone. Any intervention that ignores these realities is building on sand.

At the unveiling of the report, Foyinsolami Akinjayeju, CEO of Enhancing Financial Inclusion and Advancement, described financial inclusion as both a moral and an economic necessity. We agree. Every northern woman locked out of a savings account, a microloan, or an insurance product is a drag on the national economy. And in a country desperately seeking revenue sources beyond crude oil, the exclusion of millions of productive women from the financial system is an act of self-sabotage.

So, the question, as always in the country, is what happens next? We have the data, and policy frameworks. What we lack is the political will to translate all of that into action at the community level where it matters most. Northern governors must stop treating women’s economic empowerment as an afterthought. Banks and fintech companies must design products that meet women where they are, not where policymakers wish they were. And other stakeholders must stop pretending that a region where four in 10 women cannot even open a savings account is on any credible path to development. The 38 per cent figure from the Bayero University report is a verdict on our national priorities, policies, and pretensions to inclusive growth.