Airtel Empower Her reaches women entrepreneurs with SME training, grants

The Airtel Africa Foundation has launched a new phase of intervention targeted at women-owned small and medium enterprises in Nigeria, expanding access to business training, financial literacy education, digital banking tools, grants and point-of-sale devices under its “Empower Her” initiative.

Implemented in Nigeria through Airtel Nigeria, the programme is positioned as a structured response to the persistent financing and operational barriers facing women entrepreneurs, particularly those operating within the country’s vast informal economy.

The first phase of the initiative is currently underway across six locations — Lagos, Oyo, Enugu, Akwa Ibom, Kano and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja — with nearly 2,000 women reached in April alone.

Focus on financial capability, not just access

Nigeria’s SME ecosystem remains one of the largest in Africa, with informal businesses accounting for a significant share of employment and economic activity. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, much of this sector still runs outside formal banking systems, leaving many entrepreneurs without structured bookkeeping practices, digital payment tools or access to scalable finance.

For women, these limitations are often more severe.

Many female entrepreneurs dominate sectors such as petty retail, food processing, tailoring, small-scale agriculture and local trade, yet remain excluded from formal lending systems due to lack of collateral, weak credit history and limited financial documentation.

The Empower Her programme seeks to address this gap by combining enterprise education with practical financial onboarding.

Participants receive training in budgeting, savings behaviour, pricing models, record keeping and cost tracking, alongside guided access to digital financial services including mobile wallets and agency banking systems powered by Smartcash Payment Service Bank.

Rather than simply opening accounts, the programme is designed to teach women how to use financial tools in ways that improve decision-making and business sustainability.

For example, traders are taught how to separate household spending from business income, while food processors and farmers learn how to calculate production costs more accurately before pricing goods for market.

Grants and POS devices to support immediate application

A key feature of the initiative is its integration of training with direct support instruments.

Selected beneficiaries receive micro-grants and POS devices, allowing them to immediately adopt digital transaction systems and reduce reliance on cash-only trade. This approach is intended to lower transaction friction, improve transparency and help small businesses build financial records that may later support access to credit.

Chairman of the Airtel Africa Foundation, Dr Segun Ogunsanya, described the initiative as an economic empowerment model rather than a corporate social gesture, noting that improving women’s financial understanding has multiplier effects across households and communities.

According to him, when women entrepreneurs gain stronger control over financial decisions, the benefits extend beyond individual enterprises into local economic resilience.

Partnership model reflects wider inclusion strategy

The programme is being delivered in collaboration with the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), which provides enterprise development expertise, while Smartcash supplies the financial infrastructure for onboarding and payments.

Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria plays a central role in aligning the initiative with broader national enterprise support policies, particularly around capacity building for underserved entrepreneurs.

The partnership reflects a growing trend in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector, where operators are moving beyond connectivity into financial services, leveraging mobile infrastructure to deepen inclusion.

This shift comes as both government and development institutions intensify support for financial inclusion schemes aimed at informal businesses, recognising their role in employment generation and economic stability.

Structural barriers remain unresolved

Despite the programme’s promise, experts note that training and digital tools alone cannot resolve the deeper structural challenges confronting women-led SMEs.

Access to affordable credit remains constrained by collateral requirements, while land ownership disparities continue to limit women’s expansion capacity in agriculture and production-based sectors.

In addition, Nigeria’s informal economy spans tens of millions of operators, meaning initiatives that reach a few thousand participants, while impactful, remain small relative to national demand.

Still, the significance of Empower Her lies in the model it presents: one that combines education, infrastructure and direct capital support in a single framework.

As inflation pressures continue to squeeze margins for small businesses, interventions that improve financial discipline and transactional efficiency may prove increasingly critical to enterprise survival.

For Airtel, the long-term test will be whether the programme can scale beyond pilot reach and become part of a broader, replicable framework for women’s economic participation in Nigeria.

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