The Bank of Agriculture (BOA) has announced plans to strengthen support for women farmers by expanding access to agricultural finance and inputs to boost production, improve livelihoods and increase their participation in Nigeria’s agricultural value chain.
The bank disclosed this in a statement issued to journalists on Monday, highlighting interventions aimed at addressing persistent challenges faced by women farmers, including limited access to finance, agricultural inputs, technology, mechanisation and markets.
According to the statement, women are a major part of Nigeria’s agricultural economy, with estimates cited from the Food and Agriculture Organisation indicating that women account for up to 70% of the agricultural workforce.
However, the bank said their potential contribution to agricultural production remains largely untapped.
It cited World Bank evidence showing that closing the gap between women and men in access to productive resources could significantly improve women’s yields and increase agricultural output nationwide.
Such improvements, BOA said, could have significant implications for food security and poverty reduction, although limited access to finance continues to constrain women farmers.
The bank cited recent World Bank data showing that only 3% of female farmers in Nigeria were formally enrolled in financial systems, compared with 10% of male farmers.
BOA said the gap represents both a challenge and an opportunity to expand agricultural finance in ways that enable women farmers to increase production, strengthen their livelihoods and participate more fully in the agricultural value chain.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of BOA, Ayodeji Sotinrin, said expanding agricultural finance must be accompanied by a better understanding of the broader needs of farmers.
“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 added that agricultural financing must extend beyond the disbursement of funds.
“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 said.
As part of the approach, BOA recently engaged women farmers in Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory and supported their farming activities with agricultural inputs.
The bank said the engagement reflected its broader effort to understand the challenges faced by farmers and develop solutions around the full agricultural 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 said.
The approach is also being implemented through BOA’s Renewed Hope Smallholder Support & Value Chain Fund, under which the bank is working with farmer aggregation companies to bring more than two million smallholder farmers into a structured Federal Government-backed on-lending framework.
According to the bank, the model combines financing with agricultural inputs, agronomic support and offtake arrangements to increase production rather than simply expanding the volume of credit disbursed.
BOA also said it was widening access to affordable agricultural finance through a N250 billion facility designed to provide single-digit financing to smallholder farmers.
The bank added that its N1.5 trillion recapitalisation would strengthen its capacity to reach more farmers and expand agricultural lending.
For women farmers, BOA said access to finance was particularly important because the barriers affecting agricultural production are interconnected.
“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,” the bank said.
BOA said it was therefore developing an integrated financing ecosystem that connects farmers not only to capital but also to the infrastructure, production support and market opportunities required to translate financing into higher output.
Through its Guaranteed Minimum Price Aggregation Programme, the bank said it was connecting farmers producing selected commodities to structured aggregation, accredited warehouses and guaranteed offtake.
The initiative is expected to provide farmers with greater certainty around markets for their produce while strengthening the link between agricultural financing and production.
“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.
The bank said closing the gap between farmers’ productive potential and their access to resources would remain critical as Nigeria works to increase domestic food production, strengthen food security and build more resilient agricultural value chains.
BOA said it would continue to deepen its partnerships, financing mechanisms and value-chain interventions to bring more farmers, particularly underserved smallholder producers, into the formal agricultural economy.
The bank said the interventions would create “stronger pathways from finance to production and from production to market.”
