General News
Empowering Women in Critical Sectors to Challenge the Status quo
By Lamin Manjang
Although women’s rights have seen a significant positive change in the last decade, it remains a critical topic of conversation across various sectors in different parts of the world.
According to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres, “Progress towards equal power and equal rights for women remains elusive. No country has achieved gender equality, and the COVID-19 crisis threatens to erode the limited gains that have been made.”
Women’s global economic development role provides significant progress and impact, charting new opportunities for women to continue to change the status quo. Even though we continue to record very many successes by women, there is still a lot more that can be achieved, especially in representing more women in the workforce.
According to the United Nations (2020), only 50% of working-age women are in the labour market for more than twenty years. This means that more women need access to resources and opportunities to break stereotypes resting in labour market positions.
As a Bank, one of the ways we commit to addressing this is how we strategically continue to support some of the UN Sustainable development goals that empower women, especially in this new-normal era.
I echo the words of the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres “The Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals and efforts to recover better from the pandemic offer a chance to transform the lives of women and girls, today and tomorrow”.
We see this as an invitation to work collaboratively with the United Nation as corporate organisations and individuals to achieve growth and sustainable progress for women.
In line with this year’s International Women’s Day theme, #ChooseToChallenge, our forward-thinking approach to initiatives and programs continues to deliver sustainable value for women, especially in a country like Nigeria, where women account for 49.34% of the total population.
We see that the fewer income-generating opportunities for the larger population may leave women in an even more financially vulnerable position, hence our motivation to set up various initiatives such as the Women in Technology Incubator program, which launched in Nigeria 2019, following successful launches in New York, Kenya and the UAE
This program aims to support female entrepreneurship with the call for increased gender representation and diversity in tech and for more opportunities for women to develop entrepreneurial and leadership expertise.
Also referred to as Women in Tech, the incubator supports early-to-mid stage professionals in technology and business sectors to have the requisite domain knowledge, experience, and perseverance to deliver results. Other markets equally running the program include Pakistan, Bahrain, Zambia, and Ghana
Our goal is to enhance women’s role through business incubation and generate business outputs that improve existing business and women entrepreneurs’ capacity.
Additionally, this program promotes and creates awareness about women business incubation globally and strengthens cooperation and network building between the various incubators.
This ripple effect will cause an increase in the investment that different incubators receive, therefore integrating and developing more women who are part of this program.
It has also created awareness about incubation challenges specific to Nigerian women and outlined various activities required to improve women-led enterprises’ technological infrastructure and structural support for Women Incubation.
To date in Nigeria, we have invested over $250,000 in this program and are committed to doing more to sustain the program for posterity
We understand that investing in Nigerian youth through education and creating productive and remunerative employment is the only way to support this growing demographic.
Additionally, SCB sees the need to do its part in empowering the estimated 600 million adolescent girls in the developing world. Hence, the introduction of our Global Goal programme to Nigeria in 2011.
Goal tackles female empowerment by imparting adolescent girls in rural communities with life skills through sports training in partnership with leading global non-profit organisations. We have strategically designed this programme for girls between 12 and 18 who live in under-served communities by enrolling them in sessions typically offered weekly for ten months.
The girls are being taught critical facts about health, communication, rights, and managing their finances. All this is done to understand how to share the knowledge with their friends, family, and communities.
To ensure that more girls are taught these essential skills, girls who complete the Goal programme and display exceptional leadership qualities are invited to become Goal Champions, making them eligible to receive training to deliver the Goal curriculum to their peers. Since its inception in 2006, the Goal programme has reached more than 525,000 girls and young women worldwide.
Without gender equality, efforts to empower women will only go so far. For example, our global Futuremakers initiative is set-to up tackle this and promote financial inclusion across our markets. We aim to raise US$50 million between 2019 and 2023, needed to empower the next generation to learn, earn and grow. This augments our desire to continuously #ChooseToChallenge as a Bank.
Our method is simple; to contribute to Sustainable Economic Growth by investing in strategic leadership training programmes under the youth’s employability project. Globally, we recently partnered with Young Business International (YBI) to support young entrepreneurs hit by the economic impact of Covid-19. The project is part of our Futuremakers by Standard Chartered global initiative to tackle inequality.
Bringing it home to Nigeria, our implementation partner, FATE Foundation, will provide holistic support through various initiatives, including Digital Transformation Workshop, Resilience-building Series, and Remote Consulting & Advisor services to be delivered virtually by our employees to 2,000 entrepreneurs across Nigeria. We will specifically target entrepreneurs between the ages of 18-35, who the crisis has hardest hit.
Between 2019 and 2020, we had also invested over USD50,000 in work-ready employability project training and equipping nearly 200 Nigerian youths with skills and resources to aid their career development journeys. Empowering the future is a gift that keeps on giving, and for us, we intend to continue to do this for a very long time.
For every woman or girl-child not empowered economically, our work is not done. We will continue to grow our current programmes and initiatives, partner with similar organisations, and start new ones in areas we have not yet covered. We strive for equal representation as we #ChooseToChallenge this year and always.
Lamin Manjang is the Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria Limited
Dangote Petroleum Refinery is reportedly nearing completion of a $2.5 billion private placement that values the company at about $40 billion ahead of its planned public listing.
Private placement is the direct sale of company shares or bonds to pre-selected investors instead of the general public and it is used to raise money quickly while avoiding strict public reporting rules.
People familiar with the transaction said investors acquired as much as 6 per cent of the refinery, according to a BusinessDay report.
The reported terms would value the business at approximately $40 billion.
Neither Dangote Group nor the refinery has publicly announced the final amount raised, the identities of most subscribers or the precise percentage sold.
The figures should therefore be treated as transaction details supplied by unnamed sources rather than confirmed company disclosures.
The reported $2.5 billion total is nevertheless significant as it indicates strong demand for exposure to a privately controlled refinery that has rapidly become central to Nigeria’s fuel supply and an increasingly important exporter of petroleum products.
The placement was said to have attracted more demand than the available shares, allowing the company to secure substantially more than the amount initially associated with the fundraising exercise.
Femi Otedola, chairman, First HoldCo, is the only major participant publicly identified in the report.
He reportedly committed $100 million to the transaction and sold his investment in Geregu Power Plc to finance the acquisition.
Nigeria’s pension industry was also reportedly cleared to participate.
Access to more than $17 billion in retirement assets would broaden the refinery’s potential investor base beyond wealthy individuals and conventional institutional buyers.
Participation by Pension Fund Administrators would, however, require careful attention to valuation, liquidity and portfolio-concentration limits.
Retirement funds must balance the attraction of a large Nigerian industrial asset against their responsibility to protect contributors’ savings.
The implied $40 billion valuation represents investor expectations about the refinery’s future earnings rather than only the physical cost of constructing the facility.
Its ability to process 650,000 barrels of crude daily gives it a central role in supplying Nigeria and other markets, but its commercial performance remains connected to crude availability, product prices, exchange rates and regulation.
The refinery has struggled to obtain all the Nigerian crude it requires under the government’s naira-for-crude arrangement.
It has consequently purchased some feedstock internationally and recently moved local petroleum-product pricing into dollars to align sales revenue more closely with its foreign-currency expenses.
Those constraints will be important during any public offering.
Prospective shareholders will want greater clarity on crude-supply contracts, debt, operating margins, export revenue and the company’s relationship with Nigerian regulators.
It is also unclear whether the private placement involved newly issued shares, a sale by existing owners or a combination of both.
That distinction determines whether the reported $2.5 billion becomes fresh capital for the refinery or proceeds received by selling shareholders.
The transaction could provide a useful price reference for the planned initial public offering.
Federal government will next month launch Nigeria’s first national organized crime strategy to strengthen the country’s response to terrorism, cybercrime, human and drug trafficking, kidnapping, illicit financial flows, and other forms of organized crime.
Major General Adamu Laka, national coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Centre under the Office of the National Security Adviser, disclosed this in Abuja during the validation of the strategy document.
He said the strategy provides a coordinated national framework for tackling organized crime through improved intelligence sharing, stronger collaboration among security agencies, and closer cooperation with the criminal justice system, civil society organizations, and international partners.
Major General Laka explained that the document was developed through a partnership involving the Federal Government, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States Government, and other stakeholders.
Speaking at the event, Cheikh Toure, UNODC representative, said the strategy would strengthen Nigeria’s capacity to combat transnational crimes, including drug trafficking, cybercrime, human trafficking, kidnapping, and illicit financial flows.
Also speaking, Douglas Grane, acting director of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, reaffirmed the U.S. government’s support for Nigeria’s efforts to tackle organized crime through stronger inter-agency and international cooperation.
Representatives of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, and the National Cyber Security Centre also endorsed the initiative, describing it as a major step towards improving Nigeria’s fight against organized crime.
FATE Foundation, with funding from the Citi Foundation, has launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme to equip young people in Nigeria with financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills.
Delivered through free, safe, and accessible platforms, the programme supports the incubation and scaling of youth-led enterprises, enabling income generation and job creation.
In October 2025, FATE Foundation was selected as a recipient of Citi Foundation’s 2025 Global Innovation Challenge to Accelerate Youth Employability. Joining the cohort of 50 organisations globally, the Foundation will receive $500,000 over two years to advance its youth employability initiative.
“We are excited to be selected for Citi Foundation’s 2025 Global Innovation Challenge,” said Ayomide Akindolie-Igwe, Executive Director of FATE Foundation.
“This support enables us to equip young entrepreneurs in Nigeria with the financial literacy and skills needed to build and scale sustainable businesses.”
The programme addresses youth employability by tackling Africa’s growing jobs crisis. By 2030, the African continent will be home to 40% of the world’s youth, and with one in three under 35 already unemployed, this initiative will support Nigerian youth with a two-phase approach. It begins with financial literacy training before progressing to entrepreneurship development, incubation support, and access to tools needed to build viable, job-creating businesses.
“Through this innovative initiative, FATE Foundation is supporting low-income Nigerian youth to develop essential financial and entrepreneurial skills using accessible platforms.
“This support is not just helping individuals to succeed; it is building a solid foundation for sustainable enterprises that will drive job creation and contribute significantly to our nation’s economic vitality. This initiative is empowering and investing in the future of Nigeria, one youth at a time,” said Nneka Enwereji, MD/CEO Citibank Nigeria Limited.
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