Telecom
Tosin Eniolorunda Advocates for Women-Centric Financial Inclusion
For financial inclusion to be sustainable, especially for women, it must no longer be treated as a buzzword, charitable social activity or a checklist to be marked.
L-R: Dr. Jameelah Sharrieff-Ayedun, Chief Executive Officer, Credit Registry; Inez Murray, Chief Executive Officer, Financial Alliance for Women; Tosin Eniolorunda, Founder and CEO, Moniepoint Inc; Bonaventure Okhaimo, Chief Operating Officer, Development Bank of Nigeria; Emem Usoro, Deputy Governor, Operations, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Nkiru Balonwu, Founder, Africa Soft Power Group & Advisor to the CBN Governor at the 2nd International Financial Inclusion Conference 2024 which was held at the Landmark Arena, Lagos
It must be rooted in economic and business activities that are well underlined by data considering that it is actually more profitable to serve women.
This was the thrust of an engaging plenary session, Leveraging Data to Accelerate Access to Finance for Woman Owned and Women-Led Enterprises in Nigeria which was moderated by the Deputy Governor, Operations, Central Bank of Nigeria Ms. Emem Usoro, at the second edition of the International Financial Inclusion Conference 2024 organized by the Central Bank of Nigeria and other critical stakeholders with the theme “Inclusive Growth: Harnessing Financial Inclusion for Economic Development.
The conference brought together a rich line-up of global thought leaders, industry practitioners, and key stakeholders to discuss pressing issues around how to accelerate financial inclusion in Nigeria and showcase Nigeria’s progress on gender inclusive financing, spotlight innovative solutions for inclusion, and how to deepen financing and capacity building of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) as catalysts of economic growth.
Tosin Eniolorunda, chief executive officer and founder of Moniepoint Inc noted that financial service providers play a vital role in supporting gender-inclusive finance and that by collecting and analyzing data on gender trends in small business performance, they can craft better policies, targeted products, and support services that encourage more women entrepreneurs.
Drawing from data curated from the Moniepoint platform, he averred that “women-owned businesses are more likely to stay active and show higher engagement rates in financial transactions.” In cases where financial support has been extended—through investments, KYC compliance, or the provision of tools like point-of-sale devices—female-led businesses have a 7.2 percent higher activity rate than their male counterparts while looking at the gender relations with credit products, “women-owned businesses have an 87.5 percent lower loan non-performance rate (NPL) than male-owned enterprises.”
Eniolorunda also made a case for the economic potential of investing in women entrepreneurs, who have proven to be diligent and enhance profitability while calling stakeholders to pay attention to the need to drive financial inclusion in the Northern part of the country.
He continued, “Data is the new oil,” and its application in the financial sector could be transformative for women-led businesses.
Echoing similar sentiments, Chief Executive Officer, Credit Registry, Dr. Jameelah Sharrieff-Ayedun said that, ”90% of women’s income that they receive goes back to the communities and their families as such when women have access to credit, the community is enhanced, families are better off which is why it’s important that they can access this funding.”
Other panelists included Chief Executive Officer, Financial Alliance for Women, Inez Murray, and the Chief Operating Officer, Development Bank of Nigeria, Bonaventure Okhaimo who expressed belief that creating an enabling environment, with increased investor participation coupled with the willingness of other stakeholders to sit around the table and have frank conversations will move the needle on financial inclusion for women owned businesses.
In her summation, Deputy Governor, Operations, Central Bank of Nigeria Ms. Emem Usoro acknowledged some of the structural challenges that might require time and resources to be addressed including cultural practices and less systemic ones such as distance to financial services providers that stifle the participation of women owned businesses, while signposting the power of data to serve as a catalyst for inclusive growth and its viability for economic planning .
It will be recalled that the inaugural IFIC which was held in Abuja in November 2022, focused on Nigeria’s achievements since the launch of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) in 2012 even as it highlighted the scaling of innovative digital models in the rapidly evolving financial services landscape.
Users of satellite internet service provider Starlink in Nigeria are being required to complete a biometric Know Your Customer (KYC) process as a precondition to continue enjoying their services, according to .biometricupdate.
According to local reports, more than 66,000 Starlink subscribers in the country had a December 31 ultimatum from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to complete the biometric verification or have their connection discontinued.
The process essentially entails linking a Starlkink account with the subscriber’s national digital ID.
The NCC, which is Nigeria’s telecoms industry regulator, is said to have first issued the directive in August last year, setting a three-month deadline which was to elapse on November 19, TechCabal reports.
The body however later extended it to December 31 after consultations with industry stakeholders. The internet account-NIN linkage, the NCC said, is to enhance identity verification and strengthen security within the country’s telecoms space.
Just a few days to the December 31 deadline, Starlink’s Nigeria office sent an email to its subscribers reminding them of the KYC requirement, and warned that all those who fail to comply would be disconnected.
And that once disconnected, reconnection would depend on network capacity in the concerned area.
The service provider said in its email that the process takes less than two minutes and users can complete it by logging in to their account via an app.
One user, quoted by TechCabal, said one needs to upload their selfie biometrics, provide their national identification number (NIN) and then give their consent for the account to be linked to their ID information.
Starlink’s internet service is present in about 155 countries with nine million users, as of 2025. Its growth in Nigeria is said to be rapid, making it the second largest internet service provider in the country, according to The Traffic.
Biometric identification for Starlink subscribers could become a continent-wide trend given that some countries have expressed reservations in opening up their internet space to the company over security concerns.
There’ve been fears that jihadists in countries like Mali and Nigeria may have exploited Starlink terminals to coordinate terror operations, and cybersecurity experts have also warned of risks related to weak regulation, digital sovereignty and data breaches.
The requirement for Starlink internet users to have their accounts linked with the NIN is similar to the SIM-NIN linkage policy which the Nigerian government battled to implement for many years, with many deadline extensions.
In October last year, the NCC, which is was at the forefront of the policy implementation, announced that all active SIM cards across all network providers had complied with the directive which was issued in 2020.
The idea, the federal government argued, was to strengthen security and curb criminality such as kidnappings which are aided and abetted by improperly identified mobile phone numbers.
Mr. Kashifu Inuwa, Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has urged Northern Nigeria to pivot urgently from traditional commerce to an innovation-driven digital economy for sustainable growth.
NITDA
Inuwa issued the call at the Future Map Foundation Roundtable 1.0 (North-West Edition) in Kano, attributing the region’s sluggish digital adoption not to talent deficits but to the lack of deliberate, coordinated strategies.
He stressed deeper collaboration across academia, private sector players, entrepreneurs, and government, positioning the private sector as the primary innovation engine while government supplies robust policies and an enabling ecosystem.
Inuwa advocated for people-focused, locally tailored innovations that tackle regional challenges head-on, enabling global competitiveness by transitioning from mere technology users to creators of homegrown solutions.
The roundtable convened policymakers, tech founders, and ecosystem stakeholders to forge a comprehensive roadmap for North-West digital transformation, yielding firm commitments to bolster regional innovation policies and public-private synergies.
Inuwa’s push dovetails seamlessly with the Federal Government’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which sets an ambitious target of 95 per cent nationwide digital literacy by 2030, fostering inclusive economic empowerment.
Participants hailed the forum as a pivotal step toward unlocking Northern Nigeria’s tech potential, with NITDA poised to lead implementation through strategic interventions and partnerships.
Samsung Electronics plans to double this year the number of its mobile devices with “Galaxy AI” features largely powered by Google’s Gemini, its co-CEO said, which would give the U.S. firm an edge over rivals as the global race in artificial intelligence heats up.
The South Korean company, which had rolled out Gemini-backed AI features to about 400 million mobile products, including smartphones and tablets, by last year, plans to boost that figure to 800 million in 2026.
“We will apply AI to all products, all functions, and all services as quickly as possible,” T M Roh told Reuters in his first interview since becoming Samsung Electronics co-CEO in November.
The plan by the world’s largest backer of Google’s Android mobile platform is set to give a major boost to its developer Google, which is locked in a race with OpenAI and others to attract more consumer users to their AI model.
Samsung seeks to reclaim its lost crown from Apple in the smartphone market and fend off competition from Chinese rivals not only in mobile telephones, but televisions and home appliances, all overseen by Roh.
It will offer integrated AI services across consumer products to widen its lead over Apple in such features, though the latter was set to be the top smartphone maker last year, according to market researcher Counterpoint.
AI Race
Alphabet’s Google launched the latest version of Gemini in November, highlighting Gemini 3’s lead on several popular industry measures of AI model performance.
In response to Gemini 3, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly issued an internal “code red,” pausing non-core projects and redirecting teams to accelerate development. The ChatGPT maker launched its GPT-5.2 AI model a few weeks later.
Roh expects the adoption of AI to accelerate, as Samsung’s surveys on awareness of its Galaxy AI brand jumped to a level of 80% from about 30% in just one year.
“Even though the AI technology might seem a bit doubtful right now, within six months to a year, these technologies will become more widespread,” he said.
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