The World Bank Group has approved a loan of $500m to help Nigeria drive women’s empowerment,
This became the second loan approved by the World Bank under
the new President, Bola Tinubu.
It is a scale-up financing for Nigeria for Women Programme,
which was initially approved on June 27, 2018, with $100m financing.
A statement by the World Bank read in part, “The World Bank
has approved $500m for Nigeria for Women Program Scale Up (NFWP-SU). The
scale-up financing will further support the government of Nigeria to invest in
improving the livelihoods of women in Nigeria.
“The NFWP-SU will help to ensure better economic
opportunities for women, which is essential for addressing gender inequality;
guaranteeing better education, health, and nutrition outcomes for families; and
building women’s and communities’ resilience to climate change.”
The World Bank stressed the need for the government to
address issues that inhibit women’s economic empowerment and hinder inclusive,
low-carbon, and resilient economic growth.
It noted that women’s empowerment is essential to their
ability to build resilience to climate change and, by extension, the resilience
of their households and communities.
The World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri,
was quoted as saying, “We have seen promising outcomes from the parent NFWP
which has helped to create economic opportunities for thousands of rural women
through the Women Affinity Groups. NFWP’s model is helping to improve
livelihood opportunities for women and enhancing their capacity to adapt to
climate change and to participate in local administrations for policymaking
related to community empowerment.
“Closing the gender gap in key economic sectors could yield
gains of between $9.3bn and $22.9bn, we are optimistic that this scale-up will
help Nigeria to move closer to bridging this gap.”
Also, the Task Team Leader for Nigeria for Women Project,
Michael Ilesanmi, said, “The Program aims to mobilize poor and vulnerable women
into different institutions and, using these institutional platforms, link them
to markets as well as financial and non-financial services. Through
participation in Women Affinity Groups, project beneficiaries build social
capital that can then be leveraged to access financial, political, and economic
capital–thus leading to both social and economic empowerment.”
It was disclosed that NFWP has been implemented in six
states and provides support to over 427,887 Women Affinity Groups’ members
through the formation and strengthening of 20,506 of these groups.
In about two years, these WAGs have saved about NGN 4bn
($8.9m equivalent), with a significant percentage of these funds in circulation
as loans at any given time. So far, 835,573 community members have benefitted
from the NFWP through different interventions.