The Head of Solution Delivery, Commercial Banking, Ecobank Nigeria Ltd., Olusola Afolalu has advised more focused business women to go into partnerships with banks for greater productivity.
Afolalu gave the advice during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
She said that Ecobank recently launched an empowerment programme, “Ellevate”, exclusively for women – focused businesses, tailored to providing feminine support.
“The idea behind, “Ellevate”, is putting the women entrepreneurs out there
in Nigeria and Africa as a whole, because women constitute 43 per cent of the workforce and business world.
“We found out that it is easier to deal with women because they are more disciplined in keeping to agreements, when we give them facilities, they pay back without hassles.
“They are very smart, focused and responsible, we go as far as offering training for women to get them more responsive to modern and larger business tactics.
“It is a fact that when more women are financially independent, the nation faces less risk of set backs because more informed female gender beget greater developed nation,” she said.
According to her, the bank begins by opening the entrepreneurs to the larger market from their little beginnings.
The bank facilitator said that Ecobank also spreads its facilities beyond Nigerian women to countries such as Ghana and Togo, because of its African outlook.
“We open up market for our African women in Nigeria, Ghana, Togo; elevate them; open up wide range of business networking and opportunities.
“We provide training opportunities for loan facilities if necessary, manage their challenges and give them important links.
“Ellevate started this initiative in 2019, during the Covid pandemic and we have currently empowered over 50,000 women.
“To get started, we first identify you as a true woman entrepreneur, then we open up a link with you and begin our interactions,” she told NAN.
She added that the Adire exhibition, facilitated by Ronke Ademiluyi, a fashion entrepreneur, was one of the assisted women entrepreneurship programmes.
She said that all the bank’s involvement with women, it had discovered that women were always focused and had not experienced failure or defaulted so far.
“We act like a bridge, strengthening and linking our women to the right business connections like suppliers, buyers and international links, ” she said. (NAN
