The Bank of Agriculture (BOA) and the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs have agreed to establish a specialised national financing framework to rapidly improve women farmers’ access to credit, arable land, and critical productive resources.
The landmark socio-economic pact was sealed in Abuja on Wednesday, 17 June 2026, during a partnership visit by the top management team of the apex agricultural bank to the Minister of Women Affairs, Ms Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim.
The collaborative credit scheme aims to empower an agricultural sub-sector that forms the backbone of domestic food production.
The Managing Director of the BOA, Mr Ayo Sotinrin, disclosed that women constitute up to 80 per cent of rural smallholders nationwide and account for nearly half of the entire workforce within the domestic rice value chain.
With an estimated 35 million to 50 million women actively engaged in farming across Nigeria, the bank noted that shifting from archaic microcredit structures to well-managed, technology-driven value-chain financing is an absolute prerequisite to crushing rural poverty.
To expand inclusion for vulnerable groups, the BOA is deploying its presidential Renewed Hope Smallholder and Value Chain Programme.
This initiative bypasses traditional, restrictive commercial banking rules by utilising modern digital profiling systems to build clean credit histories for women, youths, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and persons with disabilities.
This technological shift allows the bank to gradually dismantle heavy collateral requirements, replacing them with structured off-taker aggregation companies and state-backed security funds that guarantee market access for rural harvests.
Welcoming the intervention, Minister Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim revealed that the demand for targeted funding is unprecedented, with over 33,000 women registering interest in the Ministry’s Women’s Agricultural Value Empowerment (WAVE) scheme within a single month.
She emphasised that empirical field data consistently prove that women maintain exemplary, rock-solid loan repayment records, making them incredibly reliable financial partners.
The Minister declared that women do not need handouts but rather strategic financial products. To ensure immediate execution, both institutions have set up a technical task force with a strict one-week mandate to roll out a pilot implementation roadmap.
Source: People Gazette
Image Credit: Radio Nigeria
