Banks prevent youths from accessing facilities – Adesina

The President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, has accused Nigerian banks of erecting systemic barriers that shut young people out of financial access, thereby stifling innovation and entrepreneurship across the country.

Adesina made the remarks on Channels TV on Thursday, where he said the current banking structure in Nigeria and Africa at large is fundamentally flawed and not tailored to support young people with creative business ideas.

“The commercial banking system, the financial system, has failed young people in Africa,” he said.

Drawing from his own experience in the financial sector, Adesina described how commercial banks focus solely on risk when assessing young applicants. He criticized banks for demanding requirements that many young Nigerians simply cannot meet.

“You walk into the bank, and you see young people, 21 years old, coming in. In your risk assessment, the only thing you see is risk, risk, risk,” he said.

“And so you go ask them for securities that they need to bring to you. ‘(Do) you have a house, (do) you have a land, (do) you have this, (do) you have tax for the last 40 years?’ ‘I’m only 21 years old.’ And so the whole of the system is not designed for young people,” he said.

According to Adesina, the result is a financial environment that discourages and disqualifies the very demographic that could drive the continent’s economic growth.

He linked the failure of the financial system to broader socio-economic issues, including the rising wave of youth migration in Nigeria—popularly known as the “Japa” phenomenon.

“The ‘japa syndrome’ you mentioned—it’s a big loss for us out of Nigeria and many other countries,” Adesina warned.

With over 465 million youths aged 15 to 35 in Africa, the AfDB president lamented that most financial institutions remain outdated and unresponsive to the demographic realities of the continent.

Adesina also pushed back against the notion that young people need handouts or superficial empowerment schemes. What they require, he said, is real financial backing.

“First and foremost, is to recognize that young people don’t need freebies. We don’t need people just saying, ‘Oh well, I just want to give you a youth empowerment program.’ What does that mean? They need capital. They need you to put your money at risk on their behalf,” he added.