Women’s Financial Inclusion and Economic Empowerment: What Community Organizations Work Best?

By Nick Rosen

Do women farmers benefit from participating in women-only self-help groups, or from mixed ones? In this innovation spotlight, we highlight a new case study from Nigeria that explores how different types of community organizations impact women’s ability to access savings and exercise financial decision-making.

In rural and marginalized communities, access to banks and other formal financial institutions is limited, and the ability to invest and pursue opportunities often depends on the strength of community-based organizations. This is especially true for women, who are less likely than men to have formal bank accounts. 

But which community organizations are most effective at closing this gap and supporting women’s economic empowerment? That’s the subject of a new case study from the Advancing Local Dairy Development in Nigeria (ALDDN) project. 

Why Women’s Financial Inclusion Drives Economic Empowerment

When women have access to savings or credit, they can diversify their income streams and gain greater control over household resources. In this way, women’s financial inclusion is a critical tool for growing economies, strengthening food systems, and boosting household nutrition. 

Barriers to Women’s Financial Access in Northern Nigeria’s Dairy Sector

Too often, though, women lack access to such financial resources. In Nigeria, for example, about half of the 33 million women living in rural areas are unbanked. 

There are several reasons for this. First, women rarely have legal title to land, depriving them of one of the major sources of collateral. Lower levels of literacy and digital literacy are obstacles to using financial services. Finally, social norms that do not see women as farmers or economic agents also make it difficult for women to access finance. 

H2: Women’s Role in the Dairy Value Chain—and Why Access to Financial Services Matters

As the case study outlines, women in northern Nigeria play a number of roles in the dairy value chain, from milking to selling milk to local traders and processors. Critically, though, this work is often viewed as an extension of women’s domestic responsibilities, rather than as economic activity within a farming business. Consequently, families and institutions often undervalue this labor, and women have limited decision-making power in determining how money is spent and how the farm is managed.

With limited investment in modern equipment or adoption of best practices, productivity is low on dairy farms in northern Nigeria. Improved access to finance for both men and women is critical to improving production and raising incomes in northern Nigeria’s dairy sector.

Self-Help Groups: A Community Model for Women’s Financial

TechnoServe worked to address this challenge holistically in Nigeria.

ALDDN in Nigeria: Linking Training, Savings, and Financial Opportunities

Between 2020 and 2025, the ALDDN project worked across six northern states—Kano, Kaduna, Adamawa, Plateau, Taraba, and Jigawa—to foster an inclusive dairy sector that provides better opportunities for smallholder farmers.

By strengthening women’s participation through various group structures, the project has provided a roadmap for how targeted interventions can drive lasting change in women’s economic empowerment. Ultimately, the ALDDN project reached over 63,000 farmers–nearly 40% of them women–by forming or strengthening 2,664 community organizations, including cooperatives and self-help groups (SHGs).

What Are Self-Help Groups?

SHGs are community-based collective organizations that serve as platforms for savings, credit access, training, and social support. By establishing a mechanism for members to save and pool resources, they create a localized financial ecosystem that is accessible even to those without formal bank accounts.

Under ALDDN, SHGs served several roles. First, they served as a means of delivering training on good agricultural practices and financial management to improve the profitability of dairy farms. They also helped women learn vocational skills that would enable them to diversify their incomes through new income-earning activities. Finally, with ALDDN’s support, many of these groups began functioning as village savings and loan associations (VSLAs), an entity in which members make small, regular deposits and then access microfinance loans.

“We didn’t have the habit of saving before, but with the emergence of ALDDN and this self-help group… our mindset towards savings has drastically changed positively and has impacted our lives,” a farmer said.

What Works Better: Women-Only vs. Mixed Groups for Women’s Economic Empowerment?

The ALDDN project utilized three types of groups: women-only, men-only, and mixed-sex. At the conclusion of the project, researchers conducted focus groups with members and leaders from each kind of group to understand the experience of women and men. 

“A Safe Space”: How Women-Only Groups Strengthen Confidence and Decision-Making

While each group structure has merits, the study found that women-only groups offered unique advantages for leadership development. In mixed-sex groups, men predominantly held chair positions, often relegating women to secondary roles like secretary.

“Participating in this [women-only] group gives us a safe space and supportive environment where we can share our experiences and concerns without fear of judgment and intimidation…” reported one woman farmer in Kano state.

Farmers participating in women-only groups reported several benefits:

• Applying leadership skills: These groups enabled women to take on roles such as chairperson, building the confidence needed to voice opinions in broader community meetings.
• Accessing social support: Unlike mixed and men-only groups, women-only groups were reported to provide a welfare safety net, offering “social funds” for health expenses, births, and weddings.
• Fostering community: Members support each other through technical challenges and household stresses, ensuring no member is left behind.

“If a member is not present during the meeting and we didn’t hear from her, we always visit after the meeting to make sure they are fine,” one participant said.

On the other hand, because women typically have smaller professional networks and face other systemic barriers, women-only groups were reported to struggle with connections to the ecosystem and long-term sustainability. 

Making Finance Work for Women: Training + Digital Access + Group Support

A key lesson from the ALDDN project is that financial inclusion cannot exist in a vacuum. To be effective, it must be bundled with technical training and social support. When women gain the knowledge to increase farm productivity, the tools to save that income through bank accounts, and the confidence to lead their own groups, they generate economic opportunities. In turn, they are better positioned to benefit from them.

Learn more by accessing the full case study here.