In Nigeria, a major constraint faced by women in the agricultural sector is lack of access to formal credit. This challenge is felt more acutely by women than men. According to a 2022 report by ActionAid, 77% of Nigerian women in the agri-food systems lack access to government credits like those in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and other financial institutions. Activities in the agri-food systems and most informal sectors of the rural economy of developing nations including Nigeria require lots of capital which most women lack (World Bank, 2012).  According to Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access (EFInA)’s Access to financial services in Nigeria 2020 survey, women are more financially excluded than men – only 45 per cent of women use formal financial services, compared with 56 per cent of men. Access to formal credit becomes a huge challenge for these women as they cannot build/grow their businesses in line with their aspirations.

The overall goal of financial inclusion in VCDP is to ensure that farmers have sustainable access to financial services after exiting two times matching grant support for inputs and one-time matching grant support for equipment. More also, other value chain actors such as financial services, off-takers, insurance services were able to provide financial services directly or indirectly to them. The services include savings, credit, cashless credit with off-takers and insurance services. In order to achieve this, the programme developed a financial inclusion strategy which covers the following strategic areas:

• Financial literacy training to the beneficiaries at the cluster level
• Provision of capacity building and technical assistance support to financial institutions with MOU to enhance effective delivery of financial services and products
• Provision of technical assistance support to insurance service providers
• Provision of support in setting up Digital Financial Services (DFS)

Under financial literacy training, the major goal is to ensure that VCDP beneficiaries understand the concept of financial terminologies used by service providers and make informed decision about financial services. Under technical assistance support to financial institutions, the major objective is to ensure that the programme provides a structured demand-driven and result-oriented capacity building support to financial institutions which will enable them to provide sustainable financial services in terms of friendly financial products (savings and credits) to VCDP beneficiaries.