To drive financial inclusion in Nigeria, Union Bank has partnered with WACOT Rice Limited, a rice processing company, to financially include 6,000 smallholder farmers including the youth and women in Kebbi State.
The Kebbi Financial Inclusion Drive (KFID), which will cover four Local Government Areas – Argungu, Augie, Suru, and Dandi, is a critical part of WACOT’s Argungu Outgrower Expansion Project funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) West Africa Trade Hub.
This program is set to resolve the overwhelming financial inclusion deficit within rural communities in Kebbi.
The financial inclusion initiative is being implemented with technical support from the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), to help farmers acquire the relevant documentation and identification required to open bank accounts.
Union Bank will facilitate account opening and expand its agency banking network to cover the areas while supporting its agents on ground with digital banking solutions to enable seamless transacting and account management.
In his recent keynote address at the recently-concluded Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) Conference, the Chairman WACOT, Farouk Gumel, said: “As we work towards achieving financial inclusion to reach the unbanked, we must commit the same resources and investments to rural-local customers as we have done to urban-global clients to help create the growth that will lift us all to collective prosperity.”
WACOT Rice is a subsidiary of TGI Group, which, through one of its subsidiaries, Titan Trust Bank, recently acquired Union Bank in a landmark transaction that was announced in 2021.
The financial inclusion initiative is being implemented with technical support from the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), to help farmers acquire the relevant documentation and identification required to open bank accounts.
