Women
By Anthony Isibor
WOMEN account for a significant share of Nigeria’s small businesses and informal retail economy, but their access to finance and other resources remains limited. A 2024 World Bank study found that women own about 40 per cent of the country’s micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), yet 52 per cent of female-led businesses identified access to finance as a major constraint, compared with 30 per cent of male-led businesses.
The study also found that 56 per cent of female entrepreneurs’ most recent loan applications were rejected, against 17 per cent for men. Although 92 per cent of women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises expressed interest in formal financing, only 11 per cent of the MSME loan portfolios of surveyed banks went to women-led businesses.
The figures point to a persistent gap between women’s participation in economic activity and their access to the resources required to grow their businesses.
Against this background, Nestlé Nigeria has introduced and expanded programmes aimed at improving women’s economic participation across retail, agriculture and enterprise development, alongside measures to promote gender inclusion within its workforce.
One of its major interventions is the Empowering Rural Women in Nigeria initiative, launched in August 2021 with 50 women retailers in Abuja. The programme provides participating women with business support, training and mentorship to help them strengthen their retail operations and improve their income prospects.
The initiative has expanded beyond its initial location. Nestlé’s 2024 Annual Report recorded 382 beneficiaries, while its 2025 report put the cumulative number at 432. In August 2026, the company announced the addition of another 50 women in Zaria, bringing the reported total to 482.
The programme targets women who operate small retail businesses within Nestlé’s distribution network. Participants receive Nestlé products valued at up to three times their existing stock or monthly sales, as well as training in bookkeeping, merchandising, stock management, financial management and customer service. They also receive three months of mentorship.
The support is intended to address some of the practical barriers that limit the growth of small retail businesses, particularly inadequate working capital and gaps in business management skills.
Nestlé’s Commercial Manager, Boladale Odunlami, said women account for approximately 60 per cent of retailers in the company’s retail network. He said supporting their businesses and improving their skills could strengthen their earning capacity while also contributing to the performance of the retail network.
The company has also reported that more than 80 per cent of women from previous programme cohorts sustained or grew their businesses beyond the initial stock support. This is a company-reported programme outcome, rather than the result of an independent impact evaluation.
For Nestlé, the initiative is intended to extend beyond the provision of products or short-term assistance. Victoria Uwadoka, the company’s Corporate Communications, Public Affairs and Sustainability Lead, said: “The true measure of this initiative is not the support we provide on the day, but what the women go on to build with it.”
Women’s economic participation is also relevant to agriculture, where they contribute to food production and processing but often face constraints in accessing productive resources, finance, training and markets.
Nestlé’s agricultural value-chain programmes include the Developing the Grains Value Chain in Nigeria initiative, which supports farmers involved in the production of grains used in local food manufacturing.
The company’s 2023 Annual Report recorded 22,115 farmers profiled and trained under the initiative. Women accounted for 32 per cent of the farmers, while men made up 68 per cent. The report also stated that 15,635 farmers accessed finance for agricultural inputs.
The programme reported improvements in crop yields, including increases of 6.25 per cent for maize, five per cent for sorghum and 35.7 per cent for soybean. These results indicate the potential benefits of improving farmers’ access to technical support and inputs, although the published figures do not provide a separate breakdown of yield gains for women farmers.
In a separate account of Nestlé’s agricultural activities published in 2023, the company’s Corporate Communications and Public Affairs Manager, Victoria Uwadoka, said women represented approximately 37 per cent of farmers trained within the company’s value chain. She also reported that 97 per cent of women trained recorded increased household income, compared with 82 per cent of men.
The figures relate to a different reported group from the farmers covered by the Developing the Grains Value Chain initiative and should not be treated as one dataset. However, they provide an indication of the role agricultural training can play in improving women’s economic outcomes.
Nestlé is also supporting the Strengthening Farmers’ and SMEs’ Resilience through Climate-Smart Grain Production and Accessing Structured Markets project, known as StreFaS. The three-year programme, funded by Nestlé and AGRA and implemented with TechnoServe, began in June 2024 and is expected to run until October 2027.
It targets 25,000 smallholder farmers in Kaduna and Nasarawa states, with a focus on maize, soybean, rice and sorghum. Its objectives include promoting climate-smart farming practices, improving productivity and connecting farmers to structured markets, with particular attention to women and young people.
TechnoServe’s published project update reported that 12,373 farmers had been engaged, with 270 demonstration farms established. It also reported that 1,853 hectares were under regenerative agricultural practices and that 74,223.53 metric tonnes of produce had been aggregated.
Beyond retail and agriculture, Nestlé has supported business development through initiatives such as its Business of Food and MYOWBU programmes.
According to the company’s 2025 Annual Report, more than 550 entrepreneurs and food vendors had received training through these programmes. The company also reported supporting more than 100 small and medium-sized enterprises to supply essential raw materials.
The training and supplier development activities are relevant to enterprise growth and local economic participation. However, the published figures do not state how many of the entrepreneurs, food vendors or supported SMEs are owned or led by women. That information would be necessary to assess the programmes’ specific contribution to women’s economic inclusion.
The distinction matters because the number of businesses supported does not, on its own, establish how much of that support reaches women or whether it improves their access to business opportunities.
Nestlé’s efforts to address the gender gap also extend to its workplace policies and the representation of women in management.
The company reported that women’s representation in its managerial cadre increased from less than 20 per cent in 2020 to 28 per cent in 2025. The increase points to progress in women’s representation in management, although it does not mean that gender parity has been achieved.
The company’s 2025 workforce figures show that it had 2,603 employees in Nigeria as at December 31, 2025. Of these, 376 were women and 2,227 were men. Women therefore represented approximately 14.4 per cent of the total workforce.
The difference between women’s share of the overall workforce and their representation in management is important. While women made up 28 per cent of the managerial cadre, they remained a smaller proportion of the company’s total employees.
Nestlé has also outlined workplace measures intended to support women, including 18 weeks of paid maternity leave in addition to annual leave, flexible work arrangements, crèches and baby rooms, and facilities for breastfeeding. Its policies also address discrimination, violence and sexual harassment.
Such measures can help women manage work and family responsibilities and remain in employment after childbirth. Their effectiveness, however, also depends on how consistently they are implemented and whether women have equal opportunities for recruitment, career progression and leadership.
The company’s workplace figures and policies therefore form another part of the gender inclusion picture, alongside its interventions for women outside the organisation.
The wider challenge for programmes aimed at women’s economic empowerment is to demonstrate what happens after the initial support. Access to training, products or finance is important, but sustained business growth, higher income and improved financial security offer stronger evidence of impact.
One beneficiary whose experience has been documented is Oghenetega Delight Jombo, owner of Jombo Stores in Port Harcourt. In an interview published by THISDAY on September 20, 2023, Jombo said her business had grown by 675 per cent within six months of joining Nestlé’s rural women empowerment programme.
“I have reached a business growth of 675 per cent within six months of joining the programme,” she said.
She also reported that she had sustained a monthly turnover of more than N547,623.67. These were figures she gave in 2023 and should be understood as her reported results at that time, not as current business figures.
Another beneficiary, Blessing Abayi, from Bauchi, was cited in a September 2024 Vanguard report on the programme. According to Phranklin Audu, Head of Partnerships at Straplan Advisory/FDConsults, which was involved in the programme’s implementation, Abayi had previously struggled to pay her children’s school fees. After three months in the initiative, she was able to pay the fees in full and on time for the first time.
Her experience illustrates how improvements in a woman’s business income can affect household welfare, including the ability to meet education costs.
These accounts provide individual examples of the changes beneficiaries say they have experienced. They do not, by themselves, establish the overall impact of the programme, but they show why the support matters to the women involved.
Nestlé’s initiatives cover several points at which women encounter barriers to economic participation: access to stock and business skills in retail, training and market opportunities in agriculture, enterprise development, and the conditions that support women’s advancement at work.
The scale and long-term effect of these interventions will be clearer as more gender-disaggregated results become available, particularly on women farmers reached, women-owned businesses supported, income changes and women’s progression within the company.
For a country where women own a substantial share of small businesses but continue to face greater barriers to finance, the task is not simply to bring more women into economic activity. It is to improve their access to the resources, markets and decision-making opportunities that enable them to participate, grow and remain economically secure.
A.I
Nov. 9, 2026
Tags: Nestlé Nestlé Nigeria