Written by Rashidat Olushola Okunlade

Following several complaints about the scarcity of old and new naira notes in Nigeria.

Reliable sources in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said banks have been instructed to collect the old Naira noted they deposited in CBN and that before the end of the week, the country would be awash with Naira notes.

Recalled on October 26, 2022, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, announced the introduction of new N200, N500, and N1000 notes.

Mr. Emefiele said that the decision would address cases of kidnapping, terrorism, and other financial crimes.

However, since the policy took effect, the scarcity of both the old and new naira notes has affected a lot of businesses in the country.

The situation further worsened the problems being faced by traders in the market, especially due to the challenges of inadequate storage facilities that lead to post-harvest losses.

By Moninuola Sulaiman

First Bank of Nigeria Limited, Nigeria’s premier and leading financial inclusion services provider has announced the call for participation in the third season of its FirstBank Management Associate Programme (FMAP).

Interested participants are required to submit their application via https://hdbc.fa.em2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX.

The application is extended to the general public as it closes on 24 March 2023.

The FirstBank Management Associate Programme (FMAP) is a 24-month fast-track comprehensive program targeted at young, dynamic, and highly driven individuals that are passionate about making a difference in the financial services industry. The program is designed to build the next generation of leaders to drive the Bank’s vision of being Africa’s Bank of First choice.

FMAP equips participants with an extensive wealth of experience comprised of both classroom and real-life work that affords an insightful and balanced insight into the world of work. The program is targeted at hi-potential young professionals who possess acute thinking skills, financial and methodical skills, and a distinctive ability to communicate effectively and synthesize ideas, information, and data to aid decision-making.

Speaking on the FMAP Season III, Olumuyiwa Olulaja, Group Head, Human Capital Management and Development, said “since its inauguration in half a decade, we are delighted with the giant strides and impact the initiative has had in promoting the career development of emerging talents in the financial services industry as they are instilled with the tenets and ethics of the banking industry in line with global best practice.

The FMAP initiative is amongst the many ways we reinvest in our human capital as we build the next generation of leaders through their exposure to various opportunities essential to preparing their readiness for the future.

Since its launch in 2018, FirstBank has successfully trained and onboarded up to fifty talented individuals in 2 editions (2020 and 2022), who have all been deployed into strategic roles in the Bank and making a difference in the organization, while we continue to support their leadership growth and development.

By Rosemary Kimaku, Business Development Manager, Mobile Financial Services at Ericsson, and Mohit Bhargava, Mobile Money Marketing Lead

The World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2021 shows that the world has made considerable progress toward female financial inclusion in the last 10 years. The gender gap in formal financial account ownership across developing countries has fallen from 9% to 6%, highlighting that women are getting closer to financial equality.

Growth in account ownership by women is much faster than men and 68% of adult women in developing countries are now included in formal financial systems. In many developing countries, this growth in account ownership amongst women is mainly driven by mobile money.

Mobile money accounts have a simple registration process that requires less documentation and better affordability with zero fees and no minimum balance requirements. Consequently, in many developing countries mobile money services have become a leading alternative to banking systems. Data from Global Findex and FinScope studies corroborates this with reports showing that in at least 20 low- and middle-income countries more women have mobile money accounts than bank accounts. In 10 of these 20 countries, the leading mobile money service is powered by Ericsson Wallet Platform, our global fintech platform. In three of these countries, Rwanda, Uganda, and Ghana, more than half of the adult female population has a mobile money account. Furthermore, in six of 10 countries, 30% to 40% of the female adult population has a mobile money account.

Unsurprisingly, in most of these countries, less than 20% of the female adult population has a bank account. The numbers indicate that in these countries mobile money has contributed substantially to increasing the financial inclusion of women.

Mobile money helps to narrow the gender gap in financial access in some countries. For example, in Liberia the gender gap in mobile money account ownership is 8 percentage points, compared to bank or financial accounts where it is 19 percentage points. In Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon, and Liberia, more women than men have only a mobile money account.  For example, in Ghana 31% of women have only a mobile money account compared to 27% of men.

Service providers encourage the adoption of mobile money amongst women by offering services focused on women. Examples include grant distribution for girls’ education into their mother’s mobile money account, insurance and monetary support for healthcare, subsidy disbursement to women for shifting to clean cooking fuels, micro-loans for women entrepreneurs running small and medium-sized businesses, and many more. Mobile money also digitizes traditional financial tools mainly used by women like savings clubs, burial societies, and village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) making them more secure, transparent, and easy to use. In some countries, female merchants make up a considerable part of local markets. Mobile money enables these low-income merchants to go digital, accept mobile payments, and modernize their businesses at low-cost.

There are a few other steps required to increase mobile money adoption by women:

• All stakeholders including governments, NGOs, regulators, industry bodies, and mobile money providers should work collectively to roll out digital and financial literacy programs for women and create more awareness about the benefits and use of mobile money services.

• Raise the participation of women in the entire mobile money ecosystem. Mobile money providers should increase the proportion of female mobile money agents, enable more female merchants to accept mobile money, feature women in mobile money marketing campaigns, and have more female employees at all levels of mobile money organizations from technology to leadership roles. This will create a more female-focused and female-friendly environment and generate more trust and comfort amongst women consumers.

• Governments and mobile money providers should enable a collection of more detailed gender-disaggregated data. High-quality gender-disaggregated data can be a very useful tool to develop baseline targets, policies, and programs to reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion.

It is encouraging to see that mobile money enables equal access to financial services and works towards increasing the financial inclusion of women in many countries. However, this is just the beginning, and we need to increase the efforts multifold to fully close the gender gap in financial access. Ericsson Wallet Platform along with the mobile financial services it powers will continue focusing on leveraging and enhancing mobile money as a tool to drive full financial inclusion for women.