Enhancing Financial Inclusion and Advancement (EFInA) has selected three fellows for its inaugural EFInA Research Fellowship Programme, with each fellow set to receive N4 million in research grant support aimed at strengthening evidence-based financial inclusion in Nigeria.
The fellowship is an eight-month initiative that marks a strategic shift in Nigeria’s financial inclusion agenda, moving from a long-standing focus on access and uptake to a deeper examination of impact and outcomes such as financial health, household resilience, livelihood sustainability, and women’s economic empowerment.
While Nigeria has recorded steady gains in expanding access to formal financial services, EFInA said questions remain about whether this access is translating into tangible benefits for households, small businesses, and underserved populations.
Launched under the theme “Evaluating the Impact of Financial Services on the Lives and Livelihoods of Nigerians,” the programme is designed to support applied, policy-relevant research examining how financial services function in practice across formal, informal, and digital channels, and the conditions under which they generate meaningful economic and social outcomes.
Speaking at the launch, EFInA’s chief executive officer, Foyinsolami Akinjayeju, said Nigeria’s financial inclusion journey has reached a critical inflection point.
“Financial inclusion must deliver real outcomes—better financial health, resilience, livelihoods, and women’s economic empowerment—not just access,” she said. “The EFInA Research Fellowship will generate rigorous, Nigeria-specific evidence on what truly works, what needs to change, and what can be expanded to deliver outcomes at scale.”
She added that the programme is structured to bridge the persistent gap between research and decision-making in the financial sector.
“By examining how policies, programmes, and financial products work in practice, the fellowship will produce insights that directly inform better policy choices and product design,” Akinjayeju said.
Each fellow will receive N4 million in research grant support to cover fieldwork, travel, and research tools, alongside structured monthly mentorship from senior researchers, policymakers, and industry professionals.
Fellows will also gain access to EFInA’s data assets, including its Access to Finance (A2F) survey reports, one of Nigeria’s most comprehensive demand-side datasets on financial inclusion.
Beyond funding, EFInA said the programme places strong emphasis on research quality, relevance, and uptake. Fellows will participate in monthly capacity-building workshops covering research design, impact evaluation, gender-responsive analysis, and policy engagement.
These workshops will be delivered in collaboration with institutions such as Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), J-PAL, Lagos Business School, the Central Bank of Nigeria, and international development partners.
According to EFInA’s research lead, Oluwatomi Eromosele, the fellowship responds to a long-standing evidence gap in Nigeria’s financial inclusion ecosystem.
“Access alone is no longer sufficient,” she said. “The critical question is whether financial inclusion is translating into better financial health, greater resilience to shocks, improved livelihoods, and meaningful economic opportunities for women and underserved groups.”
She noted that EFInA is prioritising research that is both credible and usable.
“We are investing in rigorous, Nigeria-specific evidence and translating findings into practical, decision-oriented outputs that directly inform policy, regulation, and product design,” Eromosele said.
The fellows will explore research questions across priority themes, including financial health and household resilience amid economic and climate shocks; the role of financial tools in supporting MSME growth and informal livelihoods; women’s economic empowerment through digital and group-based savings mechanisms; and trust, service experience, and satisfaction across financial channels.
The 2025 EFInA Research Fellows are Sarah Edewor, an agricultural economist and development researcher; Abdulmumin Usman, a policy and political economy researcher; and Abdullahi Ibrahim, a measurement, evaluation, research, and learning practitioner.
A core objective of the fellowship is to reduce Nigeria’s reliance on financial inclusion evidence drawn from other developing contexts such as India and Bangladesh, which EFInA said do not fully reflect Nigeria’s institutional, cultural, and market realities.
By generating locally grounded evidence, EFInA aims to equip policymakers, regulators, financial service providers, and development partners with insights tailored to Nigeria’s context.
Fellows will present interim findings during the programme and showcase their final research outputs at EFInA’s Annual Research Symposium in May 2026.
Final outputs will include peer-reviewed research papers, policy briefs, and practitioner-focused knowledge products disseminated to stakeholders.
The EFInA Research Fellowship aligns with Nigeria’s National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) 2024–2027, which places renewed emphasis on trust, innovation, consumer outcomes, and inclusive growth nationwide
