The Bank of Agriculture (BOA) and the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs have agreed to develop a financing framework to improve women farmers’ access to credit and productive resources across Nigeria, officials said.

The agreement was reached in Abuja on Wednesday during a courtesy visit by the BOA management team to the Minister of Women Affairs, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, to strengthen agricultural empowerment initiatives.

The Managing Director of BOA, Ayo Sotinrin, said women constituted a significant share of Nigeria’s agricultural workforce, accounting for nearly half of participants in the rice value chain.

Mr Sotinrin said women also represented up to 80 per cent of rural farmers, underscoring their critical role in agricultural production, food security and the country’s broader economic development efforts.

According to him, between 35 million and 50 million women are engaged in agriculture nationwide, making targeted interventions essential to improving productivity, reducing poverty and strengthening national food security.

He said the bank was shifting from conventional microcredit schemes to structured smallholder and agricultural value-chain financing programmes designed to deliver sustainable support and improve farmers’ long-term economic outcomes.

Mr Sotinrin highlighted the Renewed Hope Smallholder and Value Chain Programme, developed with the Presidency, which provided financing, training, inputs and market access through aggregation companies and state-backed funds.

He added that women, youths, internally displaced persons and persons with disabilities remained priority beneficiaries under the bank’s intervention programmes aimed at promoting inclusion, economic participation and rural development.

The BOA chief also said the bank had adopted technology-driven lending systems to profile farmers digitally, build credit histories and gradually reduce collateral requirements for agricultural borrowers nationwide.

He expressed the bank’s readiness to collaborate with the ministry on the Women’s Agricultural Value Empowerment (WAVE) Programme and the Nigeria for Women Project Scale-Up initiative.

In her remarks, Ms Sulaiman-Ibrahim emphasised the need to expand women’s access to finance, land ownership opportunities and agricultural inputs to boost productivity, strengthen livelihoods and reduce poverty nationwide.

The minister said that more than 33,000 women had registered interest in WAVE financing within one month, reflecting strong demand for agricultural funding and women-focused empowerment programmes.

She said experience had shown that women maintained strong loan repayment records, making them reliable beneficiaries of agricultural financing programmes and strategic partners in efforts to strengthen rural economies.

Ms Sulaiman-Ibrahim added that sustainable financing mechanisms could enable recovered funds from initial beneficiaries to support additional women farmers, thereby expanding programme reach and ensuring long-term impact.

“Women do not need handouts; they need opportunities and the right financial products to succeed,” she said.

Both parties agreed to establish technical teams to develop a pilot implementation plan within one week while addressing land access challenges affecting women farmers across the country. 

(NAN)