SABI-Woman — Disability-Inclusive Business Education & Seed Funding for Women in Kano and Lagos

SABI-Woman is Sightsavers Nigeria's disability-inclusive strand of the Girls' Education and Skills Partnership (GESP), a UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)-funded, UNICEF-coordinated programme that also runs in Bangladesh to give girls and young women aged 13-25 market-relevant skills. In Nigeria, SABI-Woman was delivered in Kano and Lagos states with local partners Project Enable Africa and the Kanawa Educational Foundation for the Disabled.
Over the life of the project, 2,878 adolescent girls and young women with disabilities were reached: 1,512 received employability and entrepreneurship training aimed at economic independence, and 1,366 adolescent girls received life-skills and career guidance. The project also trained 217 life coaches, 202 technical and vocational education facilitators and 127 business advisors on disability-inclusive practice.
On the economic side, 670 women received business starter kits worth more than 40 million naira, and 88% of that seed capital was repaid - a concrete signal that the funded micro-businesses were viable. The project also trained 1,647 employees at partner organisations on workplace disability inclusion and equal-opportunity practices, extending its reach beyond direct beneficiaries.
A follow-on cohort of 70 women in Lagos received a further 4.7 million naira in seed grants (reported December 2024), indicating the model continued into at least a second funding round. The project formally closed out at a public event in Abuja on 23 June 2026, where Nigeria's Federal Government publicly committed to expanding the inclusion of women with disabilities in economic empowerment programmes.

Read the full analysis: https://nannews.ng/sightsavers-empowers-2878-women-girls-with-disabilities/