The National Credit Guarantee Company (NCGC), says it has launched a N100 billion GuaranteeHer initiative, deepen its support for women entrepreneurs through a dedicated gender-responsive credit framework over the next five years.
The initiative targets more than N100 billion in financing for women-owned and women-led MSMEs over the next five years, with the potential to reach more than 20,000 businesses and create or sustain over 150,000 jobs.
At the Stakeholders’ Forum in Lagos, themed, “Credit Guarantees as a Catalyst for Inclusive Economic Growth.”, that featured the unveiling of the NCGC GuaranteeHer initiative, a flagship credit guarantee framework for women entrepreneurs across Nigeria, as well as activities marking the company’s first anniversary.
The launch came against the backdrop of persistent concerns over the difficulty faced by women entrepreneurs in obtaining bank loans, particularly because of high collateral requirements, expensive credit and repayment terms that often do not reflect the realities of small businesses.
Speaking at the event, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Taiwo Oyedele said that despite Nigeria’s abundance of entrepreneurs, ideas and ambition, limited access to affordable capital remained a major challenge confronting businesses.
Also, Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Doris Udoka-Anile; and Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Imaan Suleiman-Ibrahim, have called for increased access to affordable credit for women and youth-led micro, small and medium enterprises, MSMEs.
Oyedele said: “When a viable business cannot access finance, we do not merely deny one entrepreneur a loan. We lose the jobs that business could have created. We lose the production it could have generated.”
He congratulated the NCGC on the GuaranteeHer initiative, but said its success should ultimately be measured by the volume of credit that reached businesses, reduction in collateral requirements, affordability of financing and more appropriate repayment terms.
Oyedele said the initiative was aligned with the next phase of the Federal Government’s economic reforms, which he described as a transition from macroeconomic stabilisation to shared prosperity.
“Over the past three years, we have undertaken difficult reforms to restore macroeconomic stability and strengthen the foundations of our economy.
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“But stability is not the destination. The destination is shared prosperity. We must now increasingly convert stability into investment, investment into production, production into jobs, and growth into improved living standards,” he said.
Also speaking, Suleiman-Ibrahim, who was represented by the Chief Executive Officer of Odio Mimonet, Odio Oseni, said many Nigerian women lacked the ecosystem and financial support required to translate their ambitions into sustainable businesses.
She said access to finance remained a major constraint for women-owned enterprises, while many female entrepreneurs had also experienced rejection of loan applications.
Suleiman-Ibrahim underscored the partnership between the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development and the NCGC, saying the combination of the ministry’s policy mandate and grassroots reach with NCGC’s financial architecture would help reduce lending risks and expand access to credit.
She described GuaranteeHer as more than a financial framework, saying it would provide a pathway from enterprise to finance, expansion and prosperity.
“For too long, we have trained women to build their skills and encouraged entrepreneurship, only for many to encounter the same barrier when they seek capital.
“We must therefore change the question from ‘How do we empower women?’ to ‘How do we unlock the economic power of women?’” she said.
The Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Udoka-Anile, represented by Bassey Philip, congratulated the NCGC board and management on the initiative.
She described GuaranteeHer as “economic infrastructure for inclusion”, saying public policy could help private finance reach viable enterprises that conventional collateral requirements often excluded.
“Women are producers, employers, innovators, household anchors. Financing their enterprises is not welfare, it is sound economic growth policy,” she said.
Earlier, the Managing Director of NCGC, Bonaventure Okhiamo, said the company’s interventions in its first year had enabled 67,112 enterprises across the country to access finance.
He said about N6.5 trillion in funding had been made available, while 601,209 direct and indirect jobs had been created or sustained.
According to Okhiamo, more than 66 per cent of the credit was allocated to priority sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, trade, technology, renewable energy, compressed natural gas, CNG, transport and healthcare.
He said the NCGC would deepen its support for women entrepreneurs through a dedicated gender-responsive credit framework designed to unlock more than N100 billion for female-led enterprises over the next five years.
Okhiamo added that the company had supported more than 11,374 women-owned businesses in its first year, stressing that sustainable economic development required “intentional inclusion.”
