In the bustling commercial districts of Lagos, thousands of women-led enterprises operate under a persistent financial shadow: the inability to access affordable, institutional capital. While these businesses often form the backbone of local supply chains—from agriculture to light manufacturing—they historically face higher borrowing costs and more stringent collateral requirements than their male-led counterparts. The Bank of Industry (BOI), Nigeria’s primary development finance institution, is now attempting to dismantle these systemic barriers through its recently unveiled Give to Gain campaign, a strategic push aimed at decentralizing access to capital.

The campaign, spearheaded by Dr. Olasupo Olusi, Chief Executive Officer of the Bank of Industry, represents more than a symbolic gesture timed with International Women’s Day. It marks a fundamental shift in the bank’s operational philosophy, moving from purely industrial-scale project financing toward the targeted support of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). For Nigeria, where the MSME sector contributes nearly 50 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, the initiative seeks to solve a critical bottleneck: the gender financing gap that restricts the growth of roughly 40 percent of the country’s entrepreneurial ventures.

The Structural Barriers to Growth

The financial hurdles faced by women entrepreneurs in Nigeria are mirrored across much of the African continent, including East Africa. In Nairobi, for instance, economists at the Central Bank of Kenya have long noted that despite women owning nearly 50 percent of all small businesses, they receive only a fraction of private sector credit. This is not for a lack of creditworthiness, but rather a lack of access to traditional banking infrastructure. The BOI’s recent initiative aims to address three specific obstacles that have historically stifled female-led business growth.

• High Interest Rates: Commercial lending rates in Nigeria often exceed 25 percent annually, a threshold that makes scalable expansion nearly impossible for small retail or manufacturing firms.
• Collateral Rigidity: Traditional land-title requirements act as a primary exclusionary tool for women, who statistically hold lower rates of formal property ownership.
• Lack of Technical Support: Small business owners often lack the financial literacy or operational maturity required to navigate complex loan applications, leading to high rejection rates.

A Comparative View: Lagos to Nairobi

When analysts evaluate the BOI’s strategy under Olusi, they often draw parallels with the evolving regulatory environment in Kenya. Both nations face similar macroeconomic headwinds, including volatile currency valuations and inflation. For a Kenyan reader, the Nigerian approach offers a case study in state-led development. The BOI is moving toward a model where credit is not merely a transaction but an ecosystem intervention. By integrating mentorship, regulatory compliance support, and lower-interest facilities—often pegged at rates significantly lower than the commercial average—the BOI is attempting to de-risk the sector.

In Nairobi, recent shifts in digital lending regulations and the expansion of state-backed funds have attempted to achieve similar ends. However, the Nigerian model distinguishes itself by focusing on value chain integration. The bank is increasingly partnering with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other multilateral agencies to ensure that women in the agricultural sector, who form the majority of the food supply chain, are not just given loans, but are connected to viable off-take markets. This ensures that the capital provided actually results in revenue generation rather than debt accumulation.

Measuring Impact Beyond Rhetoric

The effectiveness of the Give to Gain program will ultimately be judged by its scalability. Dr. Olusi has emphasized that the bank is shifting its operational metrics to prioritize the reach of its disbursements. In recent quarterly disclosures, the BOI reported a deliberate pivot toward increasing the volume of loans to women-owned businesses by 15 percent year-on-year. While this is an ambitious target, critics argue that state-led development banks must be careful to avoid the trap of political patronage, ensuring that funds reach the grassroots entrepreneurs who need them most rather than established firms with political connections.

To put the financial scale in perspective, a typical BOI intervention for a small-scale agro-processor might range from NGN 5 million to NGN 50 million (approximately KES 500,000 to KES 5 million). For an entrepreneur in this tier, the difference between a commercial loan at 25 percent interest and a development loan at 9 percent interest is the difference between stagnation and expansion. It is a margin that dictates whether a business can hire three new employees or whether it must downsize during economic contraction.

The Road Ahead

As the Bank of Industry continues to roll out these initiatives, the focus remains on long-term sustainability. The challenge lies in creating a self-sustaining credit culture where repayment rates remain high, even in a volatile macroeconomic environment. If the Nigerian experiment succeeds, it provides a blueprint for development institutions across sub-Saharan Africa. By formalizing the informal sector and specifically targeting women-led enterprises, nations can unlock a massive, underutilized engine of economic productivity.

The real question for policymakers is no longer whether they should support women-led businesses, but how to do so without creating cycles of dependency. As the global economic landscape shifts toward more localized supply chains, the ability of nations to harness the latent potential of their female entrepreneurs will determine the resilience of their post-2026 economies. Whether this campaign achieves its lofty goals will depend not on the volume of loans disbursed, but on the number of businesses that transition from survival mode to sustained, scalable growth.