The facility will also be utilised in providing capacity building, debt capital support to women owned-businesses, and promote the bank’s financial goal of reaching the unbanked through provision of cheap funding. It will be 50-50 participation from Access Bank Plc and Netherlands Development Finance Company and will be available to women-owned SMEs operating in various sectors of the Nigerian economy.
Speaking at the signing ceremony held at the bank’s head office in Lagos, group managing director of the bank, Herbert Wigwe, said: “This, for us, is a milestone achievement and a step further in our relationship with FMO. We did collaborate in 2006 to promote the Gender Empowerment program (GEM) but I think today’s facility for us is necessitated because of the large program we have for the ‘W’, the umbrella for anything for Women in Access Bank.
“Our aim is to inspire women through various strategic mentoring programs, a very interactive website which connects them, giving them better financial support and financial advisory services to enable them succeed as entrepreneurs.” According to Wigwe, the $30million, which the FMO is contributing is part of a counterpart funding structured to support female entrepreneur.
Access Bank is actually providing the second part, so the total amount is about $60million which is about N10billion.
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