The Bank of Agriculture (BOA) is working to close the gender productivity gap in Nigeria’s agricultural sector by providing targeted single-digit financing and direct input support to increase female smallholder participation across key value chains. The move comes as structural barriers to formal capital and critical farm inputs continue to affect women’s output potential, despite their forming the backbone of domestic food production.
Data from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reveals that women constitute up to 70 per cent of Nigeria’s agricultural labour force. However, World Bank metrics indicate a stark financial inclusion deficit, with only 3 per cent of female farmers integrated into formal banking systems compared to 1 per cent of their male counterparts.
Direct Input Delivery Addresses Supply-Side Bottlenecks
To address these supply-side bottlenecks, BOA has rolled out an outreach in the Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory, supplying high-yield inputs directly to women’s farming clusters as part of a broader ecosystem-led financing framework.
BOA Managing Director Ayodeji Sotinrin emphasised that expanding access to capital must be linked directly to production enablers to guarantee food security and yield stability.
“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. 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,” Sotinrin said.
Balance Sheet Recapitalisation Supports $N250bn Facility.
He explained that the initiative aligns with BOA’s larger N250bn single-digit interest facility designed to boost smallholder productivity nationwide. To ensure institutional scale, the bank is executing a N1.5tn recapitalisation drive aimed at strengthening its balance sheet and deepening credit penetration.
For women farmers in particular, expanding access to finance matters because the barriers to production do not exist in isolation. 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 is therefore building a more integrated financing ecosystem that connects farmers not only to capital, but to the wider infrastructure, production, and market participation required, the bank stated.
Strategic Partnerships Mitigate Post-Harvest Risks
Under its Renewed Hope Smallholder Support & Value Chain Fund, the development finance institution is partnering with farm aggregation firms to integrate over 2 million smallholders into a structured, government-backed on-lending model.
The model pairs credit with agronomic extension services, mechanisation, and guaranteed off-take via the bank’s Guaranteed Minimum Price (GMP) Aggregation Programme, insulating female farmers from post-harvest losses and market volatility.
As Nigeria works to increase domestic food production, strengthen food security, and build more resilient agricultural value chains, closing the gap between farmers’ productive potential and their access to resources will remain critical. BOA will continue to deepen its partnerships, financing mechanisms, and value-chain interventions to bring more farmers into the formal agricultural economy, creating stronger pathways from finance to production and from production to market, the bank added.
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