Bank targets financing, inputs, mechanisation and market access to improve women’s participation in agriculture.
Expanding access to crucial agricultural finance, inputs, and resources is at the heart of a new initiative by the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) to bolster support for women farmers. This strategic move is designed to boost crop production and ultimately enhance their overall livelihoods.
Longstanding barriers that have historically hindered female participation in Nigeria's agricultural value chain are the primary targets of this program. By addressing critical issues such as limited access to funding, modern technology, mechanization, essential farm inputs, and dependable markets, the institution aims to level the playing field for women in the sector.
In a statement issued to journalists on Monday, BOA described women as a major force in Nigeria’s agricultural economy, citing estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organisation which put their share of the country’s agricultural workforce at as much as 70 per cent.
Despite their significant contribution, however, the bank noted that women farmers continued to face barriers that prevented them from reaching their full productive potential.
The bank also cited World Bank evidence indicating that closing the gap between men and women in access to productive agricultural resources could substantially improve women’s yields and increase overall agricultural output.
Such improvements, BOA said, could contribute significantly to strengthening food security and reducing poverty, particularly as Nigeria seeks to increase domestic food production.
Finance gap remains a major challenge
According to recent World Bank data cited by the bank, only three per cent of female farmers in Nigeria were formally enrolled in financial systems, compared with 10 per cent of male farmers.
BOA said the disparity represented both a challenge and an opportunity to broaden access to agricultural finance and provide women farmers with the resources required to increase their productivity.
“For the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), this gap represents both a challenge and an opportunity to expand access to agricultural finance in ways that help women farmers increase production, strengthen their livelihoods and participate more fully in the agricultural value chain,” the bank said.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of BOA, Ayodeji Sotinrin, said increasing agricultural financing must be accompanied by a clear understanding of the challenges farmers face throughout the production cycle.
“Women are already contributing significantly to agriculture and to Nigeria’s food system. Our responsibility is to ensure that the systems around them give them a better opportunity to produce, grow and participate in the value chain. That means looking beyond credit and addressing the other constraints that affect production,” Sotinrin said.
He stressed that simply disbursing loans would not be enough to transform agricultural productivity if farmers lacked access to the inputs, equipment and markets needed to convert financing into actual output.
“Agricultural financing cannot end with disbursement. Farmers need access to inputs, mechanisation, markets and other support required to turn financing into output. That is the ecosystem we are building at the Bank of Agriculture,” he added.
BOA links finance with production support
As part of its approach, the bank recently engaged women farmers in Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory and provided agricultural inputs to support their ongoing farming activities.
According to BOA, the engagement was intended to give the bank a better understanding of the realities confronting farmers and enable it to design interventions that address the entire production cycle.
“For BOA, agricultural finance is not simply about providing credit; it is about ensuring farmers have the resources and opportunities to put that financing to work,” the bank stated.
This approach is also reflected in the bank’s Renewed Hope Smallholder Support & Value Chain Fund, through which BOA is working with farmer aggregation companies to bring more than two million smallholder farmers into a structured Federal Government-backed on-lending framework.
“The model combines financing with inputs, agronomic support, and offtake arrangements to increase production rather than simply increasing the volume of credit disbursed,” the bank said.
N250bn facility, N1.5tn recapitalisation
BOA also disclosed that it was widening access to affordable agricultural financing through a N250bn facility designed to provide single-digit financing to smallholder farmers.
The bank said its N1.5tn recapitalisation would further strengthen its capacity to reach farmers and expand agricultural lending across the country.
For women farmers, the bank noted that access to finance was particularly important because the challenges affecting their productivity were interconnected.
“For women farmers in particular, expanding access to finance matters because the barriers to production do not exist in isolation,” it said.
The bank added, “Limited access to inputs, technology, mechanisation and markets shapes how much a farmer can produce and how much value they ultimately retain from their work.”
BOA said it was therefore developing a more integrated financing ecosystem that would connect farmers not only with capital, but also with the infrastructure, production support and market opportunities required to maximise the value of their output.
Through its Guaranteed Minimum Price Aggregation Programme, the bank said it was connecting farmers producing selected commodities with structured aggregation systems, accredited warehouses and guaranteed offtake arrangements.
The initiative is expected to provide farmers with greater certainty about where and how their produce will be marketed after harvest.
“Across these interventions, the objective remains to make agricultural finance more meaningful to the farmer by connecting capital to the real needs of production,” BOA said.
As Nigeria continues efforts to increase food production, improve food security and develop more resilient agricultural value chains, the bank said addressing the gap between farmers’ productive potential and their access to resources would remain a key priority.
BOA said it would continue to deepen partnerships, financing mechanisms and value-chain interventions aimed at bringing more farmers, particularly underserved smallholder producers, into the formal agricultural economy.
The bank said the ultimate goal was to establish “stronger pathways from finance to production and from production to market,” while giving women and other underserved farmers a greater opportunity to contribute to Nigeria’s agricultural growth.