Nigeria is seeking a fresh loan of $10.50 million from the World Bank, information from the bank’s website has revealed.
The loan is to enhance the technical capacity of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and modernise the country’s domestic payment infrastructure.
This is coming days after the World Bank approved three financing operations totalling $1.08 billion to support education, nutrition, and economic resilience in Nigeria.
The proposed CBN Technical Assistance Facility seeks to support integrating innovative technologies and data science into the CBN’s supervisory processes and is also expected to help the CBN tackle long-standing and emerging challenges in Nigeria’s rapidly evolving financial landscape while improving the domestic payment infrastructure for remittances.
The project, currently at the concept review stage, will focus on three key areas, to strengthen the CBN’s institutional capacity to keep pace with technological advancements through a robust governance framework, expert advisory support, peer-to-peer central bank exchanges, and modernisation of the CBN’s internal processes to align with the digital era.
It will also enhance the CBN’s supervisory capacity through technology and data improvements and this involves funding modern technical solutions, including Supervisory Technology systems, to improve data accuracy, operational efficiency, and risk-based supervision.
The project also aims to modernise domestic payment systems for remittances to improve their safety and reliability.
It will explore innovative methods to attract informal remittance flows into formal channels while conducting annual surveys on remittance households and fostering peer-to-peer learning for knowledge exchange.
The World Bank said the objective of this project is “to strengthen technology-enabled, data-driven, risk-based supervision at the CBN and improve domestic payment infrastructure for remittances in Nigeria.”
The scheme, which has a commitment amount of $10.50 million, is scheduled for board presentation approval on June 12, 2025.
The implementing agency is the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The project aligns with the government’s pursuit of a cashless economy and the increasing adoption of digital financial services in Nigeria.
