Wema Bank, the pioneer of Nigeria’s most innovative bank and Africa’s first fully digital bank, celebrates the International Women’s Day fashion in 2025 and hosted a grand event at its headquarters facility in Lagos on Tuesday, March 11, 2025.
The WEMA Bank International Women’s Day 2025 event convenes iconic women from different fields and industries to dissect the theme of “using innovation and technology to accelerate financial inclusion for women”. The WEMA Bank International Women’s Day 2025 event originated from the global IWD 2025 theme “Accelerating Action”, highlights the implementation of innovative approaches to promote financial inclusion and empowering women in the long term sustainability of women.
The key highlights of the WEMA Bank International Women’s Day 2025 event include Women’s Network at the graduation ceremony of Big Sisters Program Cohort 2; special performances of music and poetry; the Heforshe 2025 awards ceremony, the outstanding male employees of Wema Bank, who have made outstanding progress in accelerating action to empower women to encourage more men to become loved ones; and a small group meeting, which includes outstanding women, who played a role in accelerating action to empower women.
The conference was hosted by media personality and television host Olive Emodi, which included three panel members, including Dr. Nneka Okekearu, director of the Centre for Corporate Development at PanWestern University, Solape Akinpelu, CEO of Harvest and Tochi Ginigeme, led the trade competitors at the Impact Investors Foundation; all provided valuable insights and visionary contributions to addressing barriers and leveraging the innovative perceptual discussions that empower women. This grand event performed well and was recognized by Nigerian women.
Wema Bank’s commitment to the Chairman of Women’s Empowerment, Mrs. Oluwayemisi Olorunshola, Chairman of Wema Bank, highlighted the bank’s promotion toward global gender equality in promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to her, “The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is “Accelerating Action” as Wema Bank’s first female chairwoman, my career proves the impact that can be made and the change that can be achieved when individuals and companies take decisive steps to accelerate the empowerment of women. The fifth Sustainable Development Goal, Gender Equality, aims to build a world where women can thrive without discrimination and oppression, and we all have to contribute to achieving that.”
Moruf Oseni, MD/CEO of Wema Bank, highlights the ingrained nature of Wema Bank’s commitment to empowering power, “This mission of empowering life is for us as Wema Bank’s identity is deep. From its inception in 1945 to the present, we have been carrying out a mission of empowering the people. A lot has changed over the past 80 years, but one thing that remains consistent is our commitment to inclusion, empowerment and support for women. As a bank, we recognize the global There are gender equality gaps, and we understand the need for tailored approaches to this challenge. That’s why we launched a women-centric proposition in 2019, Sara at Wema, and why we continue to take deliberate measures to empower women.”
“Since the launch of Sara, we have paid over $75 billion in grants for more than 400,000 unbanked women, low-priced loans and more than $20,000 grants, creating more than 900 jobs for women and 3,000 women Women provided market visits and connected them with over 135,000 women and generated over $4 million in sales; these were just mentioning some. Why are we so intentional in the gender space? Because for us at Wema Bank’s We, “accelerated action” goes beyond verbal service. When empowering women, we give speeches, and today we gather here to celebrate not only the outstanding impact we have had in the 8 years of empowering women, but more importantly, as we look to the future of greater possibilities, we have put forward the right dialogue and push the right action. Since 1945, Wema Bank has been supporting women and we celebrate our 80th anniversary on May 2, 2025, and we are more than ever to drive women to continue empowering women and build a future in which fairness is the norm, equality and empowerment are not only ideals, but reality,” he said.
Wema Bank has proven itself to be a gender integration and equality-driven organization that goes beyond women from all walks of life to enable women to thrive and contribute to the development of the global gender equality movement.
As the number of WEMA banks dropped to 80 years, the world joined the world to celebrate Nigeria’s oldest and most resilient banking, creating innovative impacts on the African banking industry since 1945.