ABSTRACT

Governments, donors and NGOs have over the years initiated and implemented programmes aimed at empowering women economically and socially. Despite these efforts some challenges still remain. Microfinance as tool for women empowerment has become the main subject of many global and regional conferences, seminars and workshops. This study therefore examined the contribution of microfinance to the socio-economic empowerment of women in Nigeria by using Lapo Micro Finance microfinance programme as a case study. The survey method was adopted where questionnaires were administered to beneficiaries of the lapo micro finance’s microfinance programme. The SPSS software was used in analyzing the data gotten from the questionnaires employing the chi-square test with a 0.05 level of significance. The findings from the study revealed that access to microfinance has contributed immensely to the economic empowerment of women through improvement in their businesses. Besides, the study shows that access to microfinance has improved the status of women both at the family level and in society as a whole. The study therefore recommends that lapo micro finance should endeavour to extend more credit facilities to clients to expand their businesses. Finally, lapo micro finance should provide more training programmes to women in order to improve their entrepreneurial skills and help reduce the problems which hinder their access to microfinance