Twenty-four hours from now, policymakers, financial institutions, development partners, entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and advocates will gather at the Presidential Villa in Abuja for She’s Included 2026. There will be speeches, panels, photographs, commitments and conversations about women’s empowerment. But beyond all of that lies the question that should matter most: what is in it for you?
If you are a woman running a shop in Kano, managing a farm in Benue, producing clothes in Aba, selling food in Lagos, building a technology business in Abuja or trying to turn a skill into sustainable income, what should this conference mean to you? If you are a bank, fintech, investor, regulator or policymaker, what should change because She’s Included happened? And if you are simply a Nigerian concerned about jobs, growth, household incomes and national development, why should a conference focused on women matter to you?
The answer is simple. The economic exclusion of women is not merely a women’s issue. It is an economic issue.
For too long, women’s empowerment has been treated as something adjacent to mainstream economic policy, worthy, compassionate and socially desirable, but somehow separate from the serious business of productivity, investment, finance and growth. That thinking is outdated. A country seeking higher productivity cannot afford to leave millions of economically capable citizens operating below their potential because they lack access to finance, markets, technology, information, networks or formal economic opportunities.
This is where memory must do some work before hope is allowed to speak.
She’s Included did not begin this week, and it does not begin from zero. Its architecture traces back to the Aso Accord on Financial and Economic Inclusion, the strategic framework designed to close the gaps that leave whole regions of women locked out of the formal economy. Those gaps are stark enough to embarrass a nation that calls itself a giant, with exclusion running as high as 47 percent in the North-West and 38 percent in the North-East, against roughly 5 percent in the South-West and 10 percent in the South-South. These are not abstractions. They are the arithmetic of an economy that has been operating below its potential for a generation.
The inaugural She’s Included summit in 2025 was where that framework was formally embraced, culminating in the adoption of the Aso Accord and committing stakeholders to advancing women’s economic and financial inclusion through coordinated action. By any fair measure of a first edition, it was a credible beginning: a framework with a name, an accord with a signature and a coalition with a table around which to sit.
That beginning also deserves to be situated within the considerable institutional and human effort required to build and sustain a platform of this scale. The Office of the Vice President has provided the high-level governmental anchorage necessary to keep the question of women’s economic inclusion within the national policy conversation, while PreCEFI has continued to supply the organisational platform through which the vision is translated into programmes, partnerships and engagement.
Recognition is due to the Technical Adviser and Convener, Dr. Nurudeen Abubakar Zauro, whose leadership has helped to connect policy ambition with the practical work of convening institutions, mobilising stakeholders and maintaining momentum between one edition and the next. Behind that visible leadership is also a hardworking community of volunteers, professionals and support personnel whose contribution is easy to overlook precisely because much of it happens away from the stage. Conferences may be remembered by the faces at the podium, but they are built by many more hands behind the scenes.
To the credit of those who convened it, the Ministry of Women Affairs itself has offered perhaps the most disciplined verdict on that first outing, not triumphalism, but continuity. The Minister, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, noted that the return of the initiative for a second consecutive year is itself evidence of impact and proof that the effort is on the right track. That is the correct posture. Acknowledge what exists. Do not dismiss the foundation simply because the building is unfinished.
Yet recognising the effort of the organisers should not weaken the accountability test. Indeed, it should sharpen it. The greatest compliment that can be paid to an initiative built with this much institutional commitment, professional energy and volunteer sacrifice is to insist that its outcomes match its ambition. A signature on an accord is not the same as capital in a woman’s hands. A coalition around a table is not the same as a loan officer redesigning a collateral requirement in Katsina. The 2025 edition demonstrated that government could convene the room. The 2026 edition must demonstrate that the room can move money.
To its credit, the organising architecture appears to understand this. The 2026 edition is explicitly framed as the year for translating the commitments of 2025 into measurable results, mobilising investment, strengthening partnerships and building sustainable pathways into finance, entrepreneurship, technology, innovation and productive employment under the theme, “Designing for Delivery: Financing. Systems. Scale.” That is the right ambition, expressed in the right language. Whether it survives contact with implementation is the question that matters now.
The real test is whether the conversation moves from empowerment as rhetoric to inclusion as economic infrastructure. A woman may receive training, but what happens afterwards? Can she access working capital? Can she obtain appropriate financial services? Can she buy equipment? Can she find customers? Can she participate in procurement opportunities? Can she use digital platforms to reach larger markets? Can she move from subsistence to enterprise, and from enterprise to scale?
Training without access becomes another certificate. Empowerment without opportunity becomes another slogan. For the Nigerian woman, therefore, what should be in She’s Included is something practical: access to finance, access to markets, access to digital tools, access to business networks, access to information and access to opportunities that convert skills into income and income into sustainable economic independence.
For financial institutions, the proposition is equally important. Millions of underserved women should not be viewed merely as beneficiaries waiting for special intervention. They are customers, entrepreneurs, producers, savers, borrowers and investors. The question for banks and fintechs should therefore be less about creating another product labelled “for women” and more about understanding why existing financial products fail to reach them.
Is collateral the problem? Is documentation the problem? Is pricing the problem? Is distance the problem? Is digital literacy the problem? Or have institutions simply failed to understand the commercial realities of women operating successfully outside conventional models? These are business questions, not charity questions, and no institution should leave Abuja this week without having answered at least one of them concretely.
For government and regulators, She’s Included should reinforce another important truth: financial inclusion does not exist in isolation. A woman cannot participate fully in the formal economy simply because credit becomes available. Identity systems matter. Payment infrastructure matters. Education matters. Telecommunications matter. Consumer protection matters. Property rights matter. Transportation matters. Digital access matters. Inclusion must therefore be approached as a system, not a slogan.
No single ministry can deliver it. No single bank can deliver it. No single development partner can deliver it. Certainly, no single conference can deliver it. But a conference can bring the institutions controlling different pieces of that system into the same room and force a more consequential conversation: who will do what, by when, and how will success be measured?
That should be the defining question of She’s Included 2026, because Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of empowerment programmes. What it often lacks is scale, continuity and measurable transition from intervention to economic outcome. A programme that trains a thousand women is valuable. A system that helps millions of women build viable livelihoods can change an economy. That is the difference between a project and economic transformation, and it is precisely the distance between where the Aso Accord stood in 2025 and where “Designing for Delivery” seeks to take the conversation in 2026.
For businesses, too, inclusion deserves to move beyond corporate social responsibility. Women are not merely beneficiaries of corporate generosity. They are suppliers, distributors, consumers, innovators, professionals and potential business partners. Companies that integrate more women into supply chains, procurement networks, distribution systems and emerging markets may advance inclusion while also expanding their own commercial opportunities.
Men should also understand what is at stake. A woman with a sustainable income strengthens her household. A successful woman entrepreneur employs both men and women. A woman with access to finance expands production, buys goods, pays for services and contributes to economic activity throughout her community. Economic inclusion is not a zero-sum contest between women and men. It is about increasing the number of Nigerians able to create value.
This is why the success of She’s Included 2026 should not ultimately be measured by the number of dignitaries in attendance, the brilliance of the panels or the volume of social media engagement. The real scoreboard begins after the conference.
How many women gained access to finance? How many moved from skills to income? How many businesses entered new markets? How many financial institutions redesigned products rather than merely renaming them? How much capital was mobilised, and how much of it reached Kano, Benue, Aba and the North-West corridor where exclusion remains particularly severe? How many partnerships produced measurable outcomes? Which commitments had identifiable owners, timelines and accountability attached to them from the outset?
Above all, what changed in the life of the ordinary woman for whom these conversations were supposedly held?
Twenty-four hours before this second edition begins, that is the expectation She’s Included 2026 must carry. Not another celebration of potential. Not another catalogue of commitments layered upon those of last year. It must be a determined effort to connect women to the systems, capital, markets and opportunities that allow potential to become productivity, and to demonstrate in hard numbers by this time next year that the Aso Accord was a foundation rather than a photograph.
For the Office of the Vice President, Dr. Zauro, PreCEFI and the community of volunteers and professionals who have invested time, energy, credibility and considerable effort in bringing She’s Included 2026 to this point, that would be the most meaningful return on the work already done: not simply a successful conference, but a platform whose impact can be traced into livelihoods, enterprises, institutions and communities.
So, what is in it for you? If She’s Included succeeds, the answer should eventually become visible far beyond the conference hall: in the market trader accessing affordable finance, the young woman converting digital skills into income, the farmer reaching a new market, the entrepreneur moving from one employee to ten and the financial institution discovering customers it previously overlooked.
That is when inclusion stops being a slogan and becomes economics. Because when she is economically included, Nigeria is economically enlarged, and history, rather than the press release, will keep the final score.
Dr. Mohammed Mohammed HARUNA, mnipr Lead, Media, Publicity & Communication Strategy Committee She’s Included 2026 Conference
