Why women still lack access to African financial services

Starting in East Africa and spreading across the continent, mobile money services have played a huge role in allowing people to transfer money and make payments, while agency banking has had a big impact in rural areas in particular. Moreover, both established and neobanks have invested heavily in digital platforms that make it easier for people to access financial services at any time and wherever they have a mobile signal. Although regulators have not always been quick to support the possibilities offered by new technology, millions of people who had never previously held a bank account have entered the formal financial system for the first time. According to World Bank figures, adults in sub-Saharan Africa are now more than twice as likely to hold a bank account as they were in 2011. Yet beneath this impressive progress lies a more uncomfortable reality. Across most of Africa, women remain a lot less likely than men to have a bank account, access to formal credit or savings. Banking service penetration rates have improved rapidly, but this success has not been equally shared. According to the AfricaNenda Foundation, 61% of men had a bank account in sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, in comparison with 49% of women. This gap has actually grown from 7% in 2011 to 12% last year, suggesting that men have been more successfully targeted by financial inclusion efforts. The gender gap is greatest in North and West Africa and lowest in Eastern and Southern Africa. In Togo and Nigeria, for instance, the Global Findex Database found the gap between the proportion of men and women with access to financial services was 25% and 22% last year. In many cultures, men have traditionally controlled household finances, land and major assets, and were also more likely to have formal employment. This gender imbalance has faded slightly but the picture varies greatly across the continent. In six countries, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Guinea-Bissau and Niger, women must still obtain their husband's permission to open a bank account, while some countries require their husbands or fathers to sanction loans or even identification documents. Traditional banks have historically preferred salaried customers with predictable monthly incomes, established credit histories and collateral. Many African women possess none of these, creating a vicious circle. Without bank accounts, women struggle to build credit histories, and without credit histories, obtaining loans is more difficult. Without loans, expanding businesses becomes harder. Even where legislation guarantees equal property rights, women frequently own far fewer titled assets than men, yet land remains the preferred form of collateral across much of Africa. In addition, inheritance practices, customary ownership arrangements and unequal access to land registration often mean that women cultivate land without legally owning it. This makes it more difficult for women to satisfy bank lending requirements. The challenge lies in persuading banks to redesign products, lending models and customer engagement around the realities of women's lives. Branch opening hours, documentation requirements, minimum account balances and loan approval processes have tended to be targeted at salaried workers, who are more commonly male. Identity regulations also help exclude women. The Central Bank of Nigeria usually requires new account applications to have a Bank Verification Number or a National Identification Number. Yet because women in rural northern Nigeria face mobility restrictions and lower literacy rates, they are significantly less likely to visit registration centres to obtain these numbers. Structural obstacles There is also systemic bias. When women do apply for credit, research by the NGO Fair4allfinance shows they often face higher rejection rates or are offered less favourable terms. This indicates bias within legacy credit scoring methodologies, which frequently fail to recognise the cash flows of informal traders. Personal economic realities also play a role. On average, women tend to have lower incomes and fewer assets, and are more likely to have informal work. All these factors make holding a bank account less likely, partly because banks tend to target those with formal income above a certain level. Banks can also impose other costs, such as associated product fees and minimum balance requirements, although competition from digital platforms is eroding these. Those with lower income are less likely to make use of financial services even when they are welcomed by banks. When asked why they did not have a mobile money account in the World Bank's 'Global 2025 Findex Database report', a massive 56% of people in sub-Saharan Africa said that they simply did not have enough money to have one, well ahead of worries over lacking documentation, cyber security or cost. While changing cultural norms is challenging but possible, structural economic problems are more difficult to tackle. Solutions Some banks are tackling the problem head on, investing in dedicated relationship managers, tailored SME products, unsecured lending and financial education programmes specifically designed for women. Ecobank's Ellevate programme, for example, pairs women entrepreneurs with dedicated female relationship managers to help drive financial inclusion. As of the start of 2026, it had supported 103,000 women in 32 countries. Access Bank's 'W' initiative has evolved into one of the continent's largest dedicated women's banking platforms since it was launched in 2014, directly helping over 4m women over the decade. It combines preferential loans, business advisory services, maternal healthcare support, career development programmes and networking opportunities under a single brand. The programme specifically targets women-led SMEs that might previously have struggled to satisfy conventional lending requirements. Technology seems to be playing the biggest role in closing the gender gap. In 2006, 33.2% of Kenyan men had access to financial services of any kind, in comparison with 20.5% of women. By 2024, these figures had reached 85.7% and 84.1% respectively, with the gender gap almost entirely closing. Most progress was made on narrowing this gap between 2009 and 2016, when mobile money technology was taking off. Mobile banking and fintech solutions have helped increase access for everyone since then, but it was the provision of services accessible on basic phones that made the biggest difference. However, securing finance is more difficult, with digital credit apps often having short repayment windows, with very high annualised interest rates. Some fintechs, such as Kenya's FarmDrive, are bypassing traditional collateral requirements by giving smallholder farmers credit scores they can use to secure loans from banks. FarmDrive tracks supply chain data, such as how consistently a female smallholder farmer buys fertiliser or sells her crops via mobile apps, to build an alternative credit profile. This allows female farmers to secure inventory financing without needing a land title deed. The sizeable proportion of women currently lacking access to financial services is creating a big business opportunity, as women own or manage 40-60% of African micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) - the highest rate of any global region, according to the International Finance Corporation. They also dominate much of the retail economy and control an increasing share of household spending. Moreover, research by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation suggests that women save more consistently, are often more reliable borrowers and place more emphasis on long-term financial security than speculative investment. All this makes it even more important that women have equal access to mobile technology. The GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report 2026 found that women in Africa are 10% less likely to own or use a mobile phone than men, the biggest gender gap in the world, although this figures has slowly fallen from 15% in 2017. Mobile phones are the main method of using the internet in Africa, so not having a handset cuts off access to the biggest drivers of financial inclusion: banking apps and mobile money. Mobile technology is changing the financial services landscape, so broadening mobile access is likely to be the best method of further driving up financial services penetration rates.