CBN Embarks on Digital Financial Inclusion Awareness for Women, Youth

 

James Emejo in Abuja

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) alongside its stakeholders is set to engage target groups in selected states of the federal to facilitate economic empowerment and inclusion.

The drive by the apex bank aims to ensure the digital financial inclusion particularly of women and youth across the country.

In a statement yesterday, the CBN further explained that the programme also aimed at implementing the bank’s framework for advancing women’s financial inclusion in the country and improve access to financial products and services among vulnerable segments of the society.

The digital financial inclusion drive scheduled to commence from Gombe State, on November 1 through to 5, 2021, is the first of six engagements expected to cut across states with high numbers of financially excluded women and youth.

The statement also identified Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Jigawa, Niger and Oyo as the other states with high populations of vulnerable financially excluded women and youths.

The central bank pointed out those who fall into these groups are expected to benefit from the drive throughout the rest of the year.

The statement added that the financial inclusion drive is expected to, among other things, improve financial literacy and build awareness on the benefits of the use of digital financial services and contribute to increased access to payments, savings and credit enhancement opportunities for rural women and youth across the country leveraging digital platforms.

Essentially, the move by the apex financial regulatory body was expected to promote the uptake of other financial products and services among women and youth including insurance, pension and capital market products through agents.

The statement added that digital financial inclusion drive for women and youth in Gombe would hold across Biliri, Kaltungo, Akko, Yemaltu Deba and Dukku Local Government Areas (LGAs) to specifically create awareness on the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and its benefits, credit enhancement schemes of the government and other financial products and services.

The target for the drive is to reach at least 25,000 women and youth across the state.

Meanwhile, a recent report published by McKinsey Global Institute highlighted the critical importance of women’s financial inclusion to global GDP growth and notes that if countries in Africa could focus on closing gender gaps in their respective jurisdictions, the continent could add $316 billion or 10 per cent to GDP in the period to 2025.

Nigeria currently has a National Financial Inclusion rate of 64.9 per cent, and a financial inclusion gender gap of 8 per cent and proposes to achieve 93 per cent overall financial inclusion and close the gender gap in access to finance by 2024.

According to the 2020 A2F survey by Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access in Nigeria (EFInA), only 26 per cent of adult women and 27 per cent of youths in Gombe have access to one form of financial product or service.

In addition to reducing the high statistics on women’s exclusion, the CBN’s digital financial drive is also expected to help curb restiveness among the youth population by exposing them to economically viable ways of improving their livelihoods and ensure that they understand the need for safety of their funds protected within formal financial institutions.