It’s unfortunate women still suffer financial exclusion in Nigeria – AWITA

The Association of Women In Trade and Agriculture (AWITA) has reacted to the financial exclusion of women in the country, describing it as unfortunate.

President of AWITA, Ruth Agbo, said this in Kano while discussing a paper presented by development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC), during the 63rd Nigerian Economic Society (NES) annual conference.

Agbo said the presentation titled, ‘Tracking, analyzing and calculating the impact of government, private and donor investments in women’s economic empowerment in Nigeria – The challenge of data reliability and macroeconomic methodology’, clearly indicated that women especially in the rural area had been victims of exclusion in accessing funds due to either the existing gap in educational level or the right to own properties as women enterprises is wrongly being termed as informal sector.

She added that the association under the Partnership for Advancing Women in Economic Development (PAWED) has been doing a lot to ensure that women are being considered not as an informal setting but as a formal setting that equally contributes to the nation’s development.

Earlier, dRPC researcher, Mr Kareem Abdulrazaq, while presenting the paper revealed that findings revealed that poor sex disaggregation of empowerment programmes was among the issues mitigating against an effective women financial exclusion in government and other financial funds.