Road to Growth in Nigeria

With the support of our partners, the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Enterprise Development Centre and Fate Foundation, we have been running our Road to Growth business training programme in Nigeria since 2015. 

Women entrepreneurs have a strong and emerging presence in Nigeria, with 40% of newly created businesses being woman owned. Yet, there is a disparity in business size. Nigerian women make up nearly half of the country’s microbusiness owners and only 16 and 12% respectively of small and medium sized enterprises. This is lower than the sub-Saharan average. We brought our Road to Growth programme to Nigeria to address this disparity and women entrepreneurs to grow and sustain successful businesses.  

Road to Growth is one of the Foundation’s six flagship programmes. The intensive seven-week business management programme equips women entrepreneurs in low and middle income countries with business skills, financial literacy, networks and confidence so they can achieve business growth. The programme also presents the women who participate with networking opportunities within the group, which serves as a highly successful professional and personal support system. 

We work closely with local partners to develop and adjust Road to Growth for the Nigerian market. This includes increasing accessibility by offering a fully online version of the programme for women living outside of Lagos. 

So far, over 2,700 women entrepreneurs have been supported by the programme in Nigeria and we’ve seen wonderful results. Last year alone: