Women entrepreneurs in Nigeria face higher barriers than men do to access finance, especially in providing traditional forms of collateral for loans, since most assets that lenders accept are typically registered to men. The Nigeria We-Fi project aims to address key constraints faced by women in the access to credit by facilitating the development and delivery of innovative credit products and supporting capacity building for women-led SMEs.
This impact evaluation will measure the impact of an innovative credit product designed to surmount longstanding collateral constraints faced by women entrepreneurs by using cash flow to determine credit worthiness. It will also measure the impact of tailored outreach campaigns by banks to reach women entrepreneurs. Since evidence of the impact of large, flexible-collateral loans for women entrepreneurs is limited globally, this innovative pilot also has the potential to inform broader We-Fi programming and credit interventions for women entrepreneurs.
As part of a proof-of-concept pilot study, this baseline survey was conducted from August – December 2021 on a sample of 214 business owners across four states in Nigeria: Abuja, Lagos, Oyo, and Port Harcourt.
The instrument was designed to collect enterprise and household level data from the sampled male and female enterprise owners that have been approved for a cashflow based loan at their place of business. Survey topics include (i) household demographics, (ii) business activities and ownership, (iii) access to finance (iv) entrepreneurs’ characteristics, and (v) intra-household dynamics.
