Chapel Hill launches ₦7.5bn gender bond for women-led businesses

Chapel Hill Advisory Partners announced in Lagos on 11 November 2026 the launch of a ₦7.5 billion, five-year fixed-rate gender bond. Chapel Hill Financing SPV Plc is the issuer, using a Series 2 transaction within its ₦250 billion debt issuance programme. The firm describes it as Nigeria’s first gender bond; that market-first claim is attributed to the issuer.

The stated destination of the net proceeds is lending to women-owned and women-led smaller businesses through Chapel Hill Denham Nigeria SME Limited, known as SME.NG. The programme ceiling is not the amount raised in this particular issue, and neither figure establishes cash already received by individual enterprises.

Eligibility sits behind the headline

BusinessDay’s report of 11 November corroborates the amount, tenor and SME.NG channel. It reports that prospective borrowers must satisfy the platform’s requirements and the 2X Criteria, within a framework aligned with the International Capital Market Association’s Social Bond Principles.

The same report identifies FSD Africa as sustainable finance adviser and Agusto & Co. as the provider of a second-party opinion on the issue and its eligible portfolio. That external review concerns the social-finance framework; it should not be read as a guarantee of borrower repayment or an automatic credit approval.

What remains to be established

The announcement supplies the issue size and intended use of proceeds, but does not give a borrower-by-borrower deployment schedule. This report therefore records a bond launch, without presenting the whole amount as disbursed SME finance. Publication of a financing announcement is a starting point for checking deployment evidence.

For businesses considering this route, the useful next question is whether their ownership, operations and proposed use of funds meet the intermediary’s actual lending requirements. A sector-wide financing announcement cannot settle that assessment. B&A’s view is that eligibility evidence and a clear repayment case should accompany any approach; the bond’s headline size alone says little about the terms available to one company.