When Bolanle Austen-Peters sought a loan for a cultural centre in Lagos, she was told there was no business case. Then she found an art-loving banker to back her. Now she is lighting up stages and screens around the world.
Ms Austen-Peters, a lawyer, was 34 and fresh from quitting the United Nations when her Terra Kulture venture got equity funding in 2003 from Guaranty Trust Bank. It was led at the time by the late Tayo Aderinokun, who supported artists such as Yinka Shonibare, whose Nelson's Ship in a Bottle is on show at the National Maritime Museum in London.
Cash injections from GTB helped fund the purchase and refurbishment of the centre. In 2017, a loan from Nigeria’s Bank of Industry financed a 400-seat theatre. She still regularly relies on Ecobank Transnational to fund stage productions.
"Support from banks makes life very easy for us," said Ms Austen-Peters, one of the producers of Netflix's thriller 93 Days, which tells the story of an Ebola outbreak in Nigeria. "From there we can pay the actors. Otherwise at times you can't rely solely on ticketing."
The steady stream of financial assistance helped transform a rundown building into a vibrant hot spot that has hosted former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and actors such as Forest Whitaker and Ben Stiller.
Ms Austen-Peters will be depending on even more support as she expands Terra Kulture to include an academy that will provide certified training and develop more local content.
The success of her business shows why Nigerian lenders such as Access Bank, also one of Ms Austen-Peters’ backers, are making a fresh all-out push to add women entrepreneurs as customers.
The economy is still dominated by men: Only a third of women have a bank account, according to Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access, a development organisation. They also are prevented from doing some jobs and are more likely than men to end up running roadside stalls rather than going to university.
“Women make most of the consumer purchases in the home,” said Ada Udechukwu, the head of women banking at Access Bank. “They are an untapped economy.”
Nigeria’s biggest bank has seen a two-fold surge in deposits from women over the past year since opening a gender-diversity unit, while the number of female customers has also doubled, Ms Udechukwu said.
Access Bank, itself chaired by a woman, Mosun Belo-Olusoga, has a 15-person team dedicated to gender issues at its Lagos headquarters. Each branch has a point person whose job is to target women and female-owned companies with savings and insurance products.
"The business is growing quite quickly," Ms Udechukwu said. Access Bank is also implementing the branch model at units in Ghana, Rwanda and Zambia, she said.It plans to launch the initiative in Mozambique in January.
The lender is also finding that women are better savers, are more loyal and are better at repaying debt. Their non-performing loans ratio is less than 1 per cent, compared with about 6 per cent across the group, Ms Udechukwu said.
There is a wider economic incentive too. Full gender equity in Nigeria could add 23 per cent, or $229 billion (Dh841.1bn), to gross domestic product by 2025, the highest of any African nation, according to research by McKinsey Global Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Where 100 represents parity, Nigeria scores 56 on measures including equality at work, access to essential services, physical security and autonomy and legal protection, compared with 68 for South Africa, which vies with the oil producer for the title of Africa’s biggest economy.
The push for more female clients is a long time coming. When GTB decided to back Ms Austen-Peters, the company itself tapped a small business fund created by the central bank.
Former Governor Lamido Sanusi in 2013 also pushed lenders to appoint more female directors. Now two of the nation’s six largest banks are chaired by women, the same ratio as South Africa. In East Africa, none of Kenya’s top banks has a woman at the helm.
Current governor Godwin Emefiele is taking another approach and is penalising banks that don’t lend out 65 per cent of their deposits to small- and medium-sized businesses, consumers and other targeted industries. That means lenders need to find their own next success stories.
Standard Chartered's Nigerian unit plans to give management training through a women-focused programme it has used in the US, Kenya, Pakistan and the UAE, said Dayo Aderugbo, the local division's head of brand and marketing.
The Nigerian business, which aims to increase female customers to 500,000 from 100,000 over the next two years, will also offer some women entrepreneurs grants to expand, she said.
The lender is "positively optimistic it would be very successful" in banking Nigerian women, Ms Aderugbo said. "There is a steady growing population of women in business in Nigeria and the bank sees this as an opportunity to equally make tangible, measurable impact."
Another institution, United Bank for Africa, rolled out a female-focused account called Ruby, which offers zero charges for transactions and a discounted interest rate to target customers.
Ms Austen-Peters, who got the idea for Terra Kulture because of a lack of museums and art exhibition centres celebrating Nigeria’s heritage, said banks aren’t “charities” and are reacting to an opportunity they can’t miss.
That’s a view shared by Rise Networks chief executive Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji, who in 2011 was cited by US former First Lady Michelle Obama as an inspiration for her ability to rally people around social causes.
“We are seeing more women in the private sector than ever before,” said Ms Akerele-Ogunsiji. “We are beginning to see women take strategic positions in the public and private sector, and helping to shape policy when it comes to access to finance.”
