• Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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BusinessDay

AMMAN launches Northern women for financial inclusion initiative

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The Association of Mobile Money Agents in Nigeria (AMMAN) has launched its special agenda for northern women with the theme ‘Northern Women for Financial Inclusion (NWFI’), an advocacy programme that seeks to break the barrier of reaching the women at last mile.

Out of the 36.6 million excluded Nigerian adult population, 44.1 percent are male and 55.9 percent are female, this leaves the gender gap at 11.8 percentage points, EFInA’s figures analysed by BusinessDay show.

Figures from the World Bank’s global Findex database revealed that the financial exclusion gap in Nigeria widened by 24 percentage points in 2017.

According to the report, 51 percent of Nigerian male adult population had a bank account in 2017 compared to the 27 percent recorded for female. The gender gap reported for 2017 is 4 percentage points wider than the 20 percent gap that was recorded in 2014 when the total male adult with bank account was at 54 percent with female at 34 percent.

“Core of NWFI is advocacy and job creation for Northern women so as to bridge cultural barrier that deters women from mingling with the general public. It has been reported that Kano and Gombe states were least states in the financial inclusion ranking in the country,” Victor Olojo, National President, AMMAN, said.

With less than two years to achieve its 8o percent financial inclusion deadline, the CBN said it’s yet to know why women are most excluded from the financial cycle.

Thus, the apex bank and EFInA, an organisation that promotes financial inclusion among  the poor, are partnering on a project aimed at establishing the factors responsible for women being the most financially excluded in the country.

“We started the survey to know why women are most financially excluded two months ago and it should be out by the end of June, we want to move fast and be able to give CBN some credible information so that they can come out with policy recommendation,” Diei told BusinessDay in Lagos on the side lines of the organisation’s financial empowerment event held recently.

Olojo stated that AMMAN had taken her rightful place in the financial inclusion industry in Nigeria.

“We are now the alternative to all other stakeholders, who failed to deliver on the 2020 goal of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) of reducing exclusion rate to 20 per cent.”

Also, AMMAN in collaboration with EcosaHybrid Network recently held a capacity building workshop.

The aim of the workshop was to bridge knowledge gap among financial inclusion agents and other core stakeholders in the industry.

The focus, which was in the Northern part of the country, was designed to bridge financial inclusion gap in the North.

According to the organisation, the workshop became necessary in view low awareness of the association in that part of the country as well as impact skills on agents on agent banking and mobile money,

“The workshop offered training and follow-up to execution of new agent network in northern Nigeria especially in Kano State, share funding and product opportunities among participants as well as provide varieties of point of sale terminals (PoS), fund transfer platforms among others for agents to access from the exhibition stand,” Olojo explained.

 

Endurance Okafor