Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Rural women farmers face growing climate risks but remain financially excluded, limiting their ability to adapt. This study is important as it examines how financial inclusion can strengthen their climate resilience and livelihoods in Nigeria.

Paper long abstract

Global development policies often equate financial inclusion with access to formal banking, microcredit, and digital finance, yet these approaches frequently overlook the community-based, culturally grounded financial practices that sustain rural livelihoods. This study examines how rural women farmers in Nigeria combine indigenous knowledge, collective action, and both formal and informal financial systems to strengthen climate resilience. Anchored in the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and informed by a Gender and Development perspective, the study analyzes the role of formal saving, savings groups, cooperative societies, rotating credit associations, and kinship-based support networks in enabling adaptation to climate stress. Using a mixed-methods design—household surveys, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews across three states—the study assesses how these community-driven financial mechanisms together with formal financial services support income stability, food security, and adaptive capacity. The findings suggest that rural women actively design and manage financial systems grounded in reciprocity, trust, and ecological responsibility, challenging policy assumptions that formalization is the primary pathway to resilience. These practices reveal alternative models of financial justice that prioritize collective welfare over individual profit and resilience over extraction. From a policy perspective, the study calls for a reorientation of financial inclusion strategies toward enabling and protecting locally rooted financial ecosystems. Rather than displacing indigenous and cooperative systems, policymakers, financial regulators, and development partners should co-design interventions that complement community agency, integrate informal systems into climate adaptation planning, and address structural gender barriers. Such an approach offers more equitable, sustainable, and context-responsive pathways for climate resilience and rural development.