Trade Lenda has marked its fourth anniversary with numbers showing its impact across small and medium-sized businesses.
On Friday, 16 May 2025, the company gathered stakeholders at the UNDP Innovation Centre, Lagos, to reflect on a journey that began in 2021 with a mission to break down financial limitations for Nigeria’s underserved small businesses.
Today, the numbers do the talking; Trade Lenda has supported thousands of MSMEs’ operations in over 100 markets nationwide, and over $10 million committed toward expanding access to productive credit.
We were there to witness a company that isn’t simply surviving, Trade Lenda is growing, building, and leading a movement for inclusive finance.
From inception, Trade Lenda set out to disrupt the status quo. “Our mission was to democratise access to finance for the underserved Small and Medium Scale businesses across Nigeria, Africa, and emerging markets,” said Adeshina Adewumi, CEO and founder of Trade Lenda.
“We understood early on that inclusion must go beyond slogans.”
And the company has acted on that understanding. Trade Lenda has disbursed credit to a vast network of traders, women-led cooperatives, and rural entrepreneurs. Its technology has bridged gaps where traditional banks fall short.
Trade Lenda’s partnerships, especially with development finance institutions and grassroots organisations, have enabled the company to deliver practical value to groups usually excluded from formal finance.
In the last four years alone, the fintech company has empowered single mothers expanding their shops, farmers increasing their hectares under cultivation, and informal traders creating new jobs.
More than just a fintech, Trade Lenda is taking a policy-facing role. “We are evolving from just a financial access platform to becoming an activist for shared economic prosperity,” Adewumi said.
Selected among 10 semi-finalists in the Milken-Motsepe Prize competition, 2024, the fintech company’s new vision involves lobbying for inclusive finance policies, enabling women’s economic empowerment through targeted capacity-building, and applying data-driven models to tackle poverty and food insecurity.
And Trade Lenda is not alone in this mission.
In a panel session, speakers from VFD Microfinance Bank, UNDP Nigeria, and other ecosystem players stressed the urgent need for institutional reform to support financial inclusion.
According to Trade Lenda, over $10 million has already been committed over the next two years, targeting support for women entrepreneurs and small-scale traders.
Trade Lenda now seeks to expand that fund to $20 million within the next three years. And in a strategic move, the company is working to become a full-fledged financial institution, deepening its role in a space it has helped redefine.
UNDP’s partnership with Trade Lenda has already provided climate and crop data to rural farmers to enhance resilience and boost yields.
“You can’t throw generic solutions at complex, local problems,” Lantana Elhassan, head of exploration at UNDP Nigeria, said. “You scale with partners who understand context.”
Inconsistent policies, climate impacts, cultural biases against women-led businesses—these were all named as threats to progress. But the resolve to address them was just as firm.
Trade Lenda’s track record goes beyond credit, the organisation is investing in financial literacy, building trust in underserved communities, and opening up access through tech tools designed for inclusion, not exclusion. Its model is a rebuttal to anyone who believes profitability and impact are mutually exclusive.
“As we cut our way forward to the next chapter,” Adewumi concluded, “our call today is not just for celebration, it is for alignment. Let’s finance the future of inclusion with intentional capital.”
Indeed, with a growing coalition of stakeholders, it looks like Trade Lenda’s next chapter could have even greater impact. Not just for the company, but for the thousands of entrepreneurs whose potential has long been overlooked.
