The Central Bank of Nigeria, supported by the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, developed and launched the Framework for Advancing Women’s Financial Inclusion in Nigeria, aiming to close the gap by 2024.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the group said the launch would provide solution to the lack of easily accessible bank branches across the country which has affected about 38 million of unbanked Nigerian adults.

The scheme is designed to make credit facilities accessible to 90,000 low-income households comprising smallholder farmers and microenterprises in Northeast states of the country.

The company aims to solve the problem of informal areas not having access to payments systems in the digital age.

The coalition said it had exceeded its initial target by 40 percent, while development finance institutions jointly committed over $5.55 billion of financing of MSMEs in Africa over the period.

With this launch and with an ongoing collaboration with Mercy Corps, Payrail Agency hopes to offer a bouquet of services to solve diverse business needs and challenges of small holder farmers.

The overall program objective is to increase the productivity of the participating actors in the agricultural value chains particularly affected by climate change.

It has gathered over $18 million in donor funding for deploying over 140 technical assistance projects, ranging from governance, product development, sustainability, social performance, digital financial services, green energy and agriculture finance.

This very important commitment brings the duration of the advisory services provided by AFC to a total of nine years, with a total contract value of EUR 3.4 million.

The fintech that uses AI algorithms to provide financial services to African customers via an array of credit-centric products has raised $20 million in debt and equity pre-Series A financing.