First City Monument Bank (FCMB) is joining forces with Alitheia Capital to support the 2026 W.O.M.A.N. Conference, scheduled for September 10–11 in Lagos. The gathering will focus on expanding finance, investment and market opportunities for women-owned businesses in Nigeria.
Conference focus
About 300 women-led micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are expected to attend. The businesses operate in areas including manufacturing, agribusiness, nutrition and related industries, and will meet representatives of banks, investment firms, government, development institutions and the wider business community.
FCMB will serve as the event’s sole banking partner through SheVentures, its platform for women-owned enterprises. Over two days, delegates will take part in expert-led conversations, hands-on training and sessions on accessing capital, attracting investment and reaching new markets.
The agenda will also cover corporate governance, financial controls, climate adaptation, environmentally sustainable manufacturing and the shift toward cleaner energy.
Nnenna Jacob-Ogogo, FCMB’s Group Head of Gender and Impact Sectors, and Oluremi Agboola, the bank’s Head of SME Asset Products, will address participants. Their sessions will focus on how entrepreneurs can make their companies more finance-ready and identify funding instruments appropriate to each phase of expansion.
Jacob-Ogogo said women-owned companies were generating employment, supporting local communities and adding to Nigeria’s productive capacity. She said the partnership was intended to give more entrepreneurs the organisational systems, expertise and relationships needed to progress from sustainable small businesses to scalable companies.
Agboola said the programme could help reduce the disconnect between business owners seeking capital and lenders searching for credible borrowers. She said companies with dependable records, disciplined financial processes and well-defined expansion strategies were more likely to obtain funding, adding that participants would be shown how to meet those standards and assess suitable finance options.
National programme
The conference forms part of the wider 2026 W.O.M.A.N. programme, which will extend beyond Lagos through cohort-based sessions in Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
- Investment-readiness training and structured routes to finance will be provided.
- Participants will receive digital skills support through Alitheia Capital’s Nzinga learning platform.
- The initiative aims to build a pipeline of women-led companies prepared to use debt, equity or blended-finance instruments.
The programme is aligned with national objectives covering industrial development, the expansion of micro, small and medium-sized businesses, employment creation, the energy transition and women’s participation in the economy.
Tokunboh Ishmael, Managing Partner at Alitheia Capital, said the initiative was created to address the structural obstacles that keep women entrepreneurs from turning established business potential into durable growth.
Ishmael said the conference would bring different parts of the economic ecosystem together to develop broad-based solutions to the barriers women encounter in employment and economic advancement.
She said the participating firms already had sales, customers and plans to expand, but continued to face limited access to the resources required for growth. In her view, the principal problem was not a shortage of ambition but insufficient access, and W.O.M.A.N. 2026 was designed to address that gap directly.
The initiative is being implemented with the Bank of Industry (BOI), the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), as well as additional private-sector and development partners.
