Women Hold Only 22% Leadership Roles In Institutions – Report

Stakeholders at the Gender Impact Investment Summit in Lagos have called for urgent reforms and stronger institutional commitment to address Nigeria’s widening access-to-finance gap for women, youths and persons with disabilities, following revelations that women occupy only 22 per cent of leadership positions in participating institutions.

The disclosure was made during the unveiling of the Inclusive Capital Scorecard: Gender, Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) Baseline Survey Report by the Impact Investors Foundation.

Speaking at the event, the chief executive officer of the foundation, Etemore Glover, said the summit’s theme, “From Commitments to Action: Strengthening Inclusive Gender-Lens Investment for Nigeria’s Growth,” was designed to move conversations beyond promises to measurable impact.

Glover explained that the organisation began examining the gender financing gap during the first Gender Impact Investment Summit held in 2023, where stakeholders discovered that the disparity in access to finance was much wider than previously estimated.

According to her, the 2024 edition of the summit, themed “From Promise to Progress: Accelerating Impact Capital for Women-Led Enterprises,” helped identify major financing challenges confronting women-owned businesses.

She noted that a study conducted between 2024 and 2025 with support from the UK government-backed Research and Innovation Systems for Africa project revealed that limited access to finance also significantly affects youths and persons living with disabilities.

“We realised that if we are going to achieve inclusive growth in Nigeria, we have to address the access-to-finance issues for women, youth and people living with disabilities,” she said.

Glover disclosed that the foundation, in collaboration with PwC and the RISA initiative, developed a 10-year Gender, Equity and Social Inclusion Roadmap for Nigeria, launched last year to drive inclusive financing reforms.

She added that the coalition aims to mobilise $8 billion in inclusive capital by 2035. However, the newly released baseline survey showed that only $1.25 billion has so far been deployed, leaving a financing gap of $6.75 billion.

“It’s huge. Is it doable? Yes,” she stated.

The report further revealed that although 91 per cent of surveyed institutions claimed to have gender and inclusion objectives, only 41 per cent had formal policies supporting those commitments.

It also showed weak representation of persons with disabilities, who account for just five per cent of programme beneficiaries and targeted interventions.

Glover stressed that the findings highlight the need for institutions to move beyond corporate social responsibility initiatives towards deliberate and sustained investment in vulnerable groups to achieve inclusive economic growth.

Delivering the keynote address titled “Turning Gender Equity Into Economic Advantage, The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, said progress in gender inclusion would remain limited without deliberate policy action. He argued that Nigeria’s political system had consistently ignored women’s advancement, noting that no major electoral campaign since 1999 had meaningfully prioritised gender equality.

Sanusi urged policymakers to introduce affirmative frameworks that would guarantee greater female representation in governance and corporate leadership. “If anyone thinks these things will just happen, they never do. For real impact, you need to change the policy space,” he said.

He, however, added that stronger disclosure requirements, legislative reforms and sustained advocacy were necessary to create an inclusive investment landscape capable of driving national growth.

Also commenting, Chairman of the summit, Ibukun Awosika, said gender-focused investment should not be seen as a girl-child conversation but as a national economic development issue.

She said, “This is a conversation about how we strategically make the right investments that affect 50 per cent of our population in a way that we can achieve scalable growth that impacts our economy.”