Nigerian Women Cracked the Ceiling

Hey👋🏽

Mercy here, finally.

So… I kind of launched a newsletter, then vanished.

Here’s what happened: after two years of writing full-time, I burned out in December.

I dragged that feeling into January, then took two months to breathe and reset.

I needed space to rethink my work. What I was writing, why it mattered, and what I actually wanted to build.

Here’s where I landed: I want to go deep into banking, fintech, and the forces shaping money, power, and access across Africa.

So here I am. More focused and more fired up.

Thanks for sticking around. And thank you to everyone who checked in (or harassed me) to get back in the saddle.

New editions drop on Thursdays.

Maybe weekly, maybe fortnightly, but always with something that makes you think.

Let’s get into it.😉

In June last year, I saw a video of women cheering at a Nigerian bank.

One of their own had made history.

Dr. Adaora Umeoji had been named CEO of Zenith Bank - one of Nigeria’s most profitable banks.

She was the first woman to ever hold that role in the bank’s 30-year history.

After nearly three decades in banking, 26 of them at Zenith, those cheers were for the glass ceiling that finally cracked.

But this wasn’t just about her. Or Zenith.

This was a sign that a seed planted over a decade ago was starting to bear fruit.

Power, policy and who gets a say

In 2012, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, then Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, called out what most people in power ignored.

The financial system was rigged against women.

Bank leadership had a type. It wore suits, answered to “sir,” and rarely looked like the people it was supposed to serve.

But Sanusi didn’t just name the problem. He moved it.

In 2012, the Bankers’ Committee set a new target: 40% of management roles and 30% of board seats should be held by women by 2014.

A year later, they doubled down, telling banks to start publishing their gender stats in annual reports.

In a sector long shaped by cultural norms that saw gender as a limitation, the pipeline started to flow.

10 of Nigeria’s 26 major banks are now led by women.

That’s roughly 38% - the highest share anywhere in Africa.

A few names worth knowing:

• Miriam Olusanya, the first woman to lead GTBank

• Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe, a lawyer turned CEO at Fidelity Bank

• Bolaji Agbede, holding the reins at Access Holdings after a sudden leadership shake-up in 2024

The more things change…

The more they remain the same.

Officially, the 2012 directive was about corporate governance, not access to finance.

But between the lines?

There was a quiet hope that if you put more women in the room, you’d shift how banks think, who they serve, and how they lend.

A hope that maybe, finally, capital would flow to women.

Over a decade later, the link between leadership and lending has barely held.

• Only 35% of Nigerian women own a bank account (compared to 51% of men)

• And while more are banked on paper, just 47% of these women accessed formal financial services last year.

When it comes to credit, the gap becomes a gulf.

Just 6% of women in Nigeria have access to formal credit.

It begs the question: Why isn’t representation at the top not unlocking capital at the bottom?

When the system can’t see you…

It can’t serve you.

The World Bank defines credit infrastructure as the systems, institutions, and data that determine who gets credit and on what terms.

That includes things like:

• The credit bureaus (which track your repayment history)

• Collateral registries (where lenders verify who owns what)

• And risk models that decide if you're worth the bet.

In Nigeria, that system is built around a narrow borrower profile: Formally employed, asset rich, and easy to track on paper.

But very few Nigerian women operate in that world.

So in practice:

• Credit bureaus rely on formal repayment history, but 90% of women-led businesses are informal and don’t show up

• Collateral requirements still favour land, but only 8.2% of women in Nigeria solely own land, compared to 34% of men

• Risk models are built for salaried workers, so cash-based income is flagged as risky, even when the business is thriving

The result?

Only 16.7% of women can access loans from financial institutions.

The rest rely on personal funds, family, or friends to keep their businesses going.

So what gives?

Inclusion by design.

Not just by appointment.

Don’t get me wrong. Having more women in the C-suite is a big win.

But representation isn’t a proxy for structural reform.

We need better designed credit systems built for the realities of the industries many women-owned businesses operate in.

That means three things:

1.) Changing the credit culture.

Not just infrastructure.

In 2016, the Central Bank of Nigeria rolled out the National Collateral Registry.

It’s a digital system that enables lenders to accept movable assets as collateral, not just land and property.

It was a long-overdue shift toward valuing the assets people actually have, like vehicles, machinery, intellectual property, inventory, and even farm produce.

On paper, its adoption has grown.

• By 2020, 87,674 filings had been made, totaling ₦1.6 trillion. 31,707 of those filings were by women

• And by 2021 (the latest data available) the platform had registered more than 750,000 users, with over ₦16.6 trillion in credit collateralized.

But awareness is low.

Only 19% of MSMEs even know the NCR exists. Fewer have used it.

The bigger issue? Most lenders still demand land or property, because that’s what they’ve always trusted.

The infrastructure evolved. The behavior didn’t.

2.) Rethink the products

Bank credit in Nigeria favors three usual suspects: Oil and gas, manufacturing, and capital markets.

That hierarchy hasn’t shifted in years. Neither have the products built to serve it.

These sectors are capital-heavy, male-dominated, and often formalized, so the lending products reflect that world.

Large ticket sizes, rigid collateral, slow approvals, and repayment terms built around a predictable income.

Trade, which ranks fifth and is largely driven by women, remains underserved.

What would better look like?

• Turnover-based lending: Size loans based on cash flow, not paperwork

• Inventory financing: Lend against stock, repay from sales

• Group lending: Build on existing savings circles and ajo cooperatives

Some banks are catching on.

In 2014, Access Bank launched the W Initiative to serve women across income levels.

By 2019, the bank had doubled its female customer base, and women’s deposits had surged.

Behind that growth was a 15-person gender team at HQ and a dedicated rep in every branch focused on women-led businesses.

It was structured, focused, and it worked.

By 2025, the W initiative has supported over four million women, with more than ₦370 billion in funding.

A recent study shows that 28% of commercial banks in Nigeria now offer women-focused products.

Hopefully, more will stop treating women like a CSR checkbox and start building for them like the market they are.

3.) Alternative credit data systems

I have an uneasy relationship with tech and the problems I believe it can solve for Africa.

But when it comes to building inclusive credit systems, I’m willing to place a bet.

The first step? Bring the informal economy online.

In 2025, we can’t have traders recording debt in notebooks, only taking cash, or tracking inventory on paper.

Digitization unlocks visibility. Visibility drives credit. And credit is how we shift from survival to scale.

Visibility is what gives lenders real data to work with, not assumptions or outdated credit scores.

Yes, credit bureaus exist.

But their data is limited, patchy, and misses the millions who don’t have utility bills, payslips, or credit cards.

So banks either reject solid borrowers or charge them more to cover the uncertainty.

Meanwhile, data is booming.

• Between 2018 and 2024, digital transactions grew 1,500% - from 793 million to 11.3 billion

• Cash use has been cut in half

• Mobile is now the bank, the ledger, and the credit trail

Some fintechs are already using this shift.

Moniepoint reports that 80% of its borrowers are getting formal credit for the first time.

And there’s more coming.

Nigeria is now exploring OCEN — the Open Credit Enablement Network — to help lenders tap into alternative data with less friction.

If we get this right, we won’t just expand access.

We’ll redefine what it means to be creditworthy.

And maybe this time, it won’t leave women out.

Final Note

We’re live.🎇
The very first edition of The Big Bank Theory is out in the world.

Thank you for being here from day one.
I’m so excited to see what we build, and where we take this.