Nigeria, March 19 -- Nigeria cannot deliver inclusive growth while structurally underinvesting in half of its economic engine.

Women own nearly half of Nigeria's micro, small and medium-sized enterprises and sustain millions of jobs across agriculture, trade, manufacturing and services. Yet, access to affordable, scalable finance remains their single greatest constraint. This financing gap is macroeconomic.

At the same time, Nigeria is absorbing measurable economic losses from another structural blind spot: the care economy. Research from Economist Impact's Childcare Dividend Initiative estimates that Nigeria loses approximately 1.09 per cent of its GDP annually because mothers are unable to participate fully in the workforce, due to ch...