DBN Launches Financial Initiative For Women-owned Businesses

The Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) has launched a new initiative, DBN Action for Women in Nigeria (DAWN), to improve access to finance and business support for women-owned and women-led enterprises nationwide.

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of DBN, Dr Tony Okpanachi, announced the initiative on Wednesday at the bank’s 2026 Annual Lecture Series, held at the Congress Hall of Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.

Speaking at the event, themed “From Policy to Prosperity: Translating Economic Reforms into MSME Growth,” Okpanachi said access to finance alone had not enabled enough women-led businesses to expand, stressing the need for additional support to help them grow and compete.

“Access to finance is important, but finance alone has not enabled enough women-led businesses to scale. Growth requires more,” he said.

He explained that DAWN was designed to provide a comprehensive package of support beyond conventional financing, combining funding with credit guarantees, technical assistance, grants and market access opportunities.

“DAWN brings that ‘more’ together in one proposition. It combines financing; guarantees and credit support that share risk with lenders; technical assistance to prepare businesses for growth; targeted grants linked to defined outcomes; and market linkages that connect women entrepreneurs to customers, trade platforms and associations,” he said.

According to him, the initiative would support women-owned and women-led businesses through commercial banks, microfinance institutions, fintech companies, aggregators and cooperatives, as well as direct channels.

Okpanachi said the programme would also provide participating financial institutions with a stronger foundation to extend sustainable financing to women entrepreneurs.

“For our Participating Financial Institutions, it provides a stronger basis to lend to women-led businesses sustainably,” he added.

He identified agriculture and exports, healthcare, arts and creatives, technology, and green businesses as the priority sectors for the initiative.

The DBN chief executive said the launch of DAWN formed part of the bank’s broader efforts to strengthen micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and ensure that economic reforms translated into practical benefits for businesses.

He noted that the bank had disbursed a cumulative ₦1.4 trillion to MSMEs through 84 Participating Financial Institutions as of December 2025, creating approximately 1.6 million jobs across the country.

Under its new five-year strategy, DBN also aims to reach more than two million MSMEs, with deliberate targets for women-led businesses, youth-led enterprises and businesses in underserved states.

The bank said the initiative was intended to address some of the barriers limiting business growth and help more women entrepreneurs access the financial and non-financial resources needed to expand their operations.

The launch of DAWN was one of the key activities at the 2026 DBN Annual Lecture Series, which brought together policymakers, financial institutions, entrepreneurs and development partners to discuss how economic reforms could support business growth in Nigeria.