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The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank Group, has approved a N2 billion ($10 million) loan to Nigeria’s LAPO Microfinance Bank to enhance lending to small-scale entrepreneurs, low-income customers, and rural communities.

In a statement released on Monday, the IFC said the loan represents its largest investment in a microfinance institution in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2012, IFC provided an N800 million loan to LAPO Microfinance Bank, which has a national microfinance license. This has helped the bank grow its customer base from 700,000 customers in 2012 to over two million customers across 28 states in Nigeria. The bank hopes to raise its customer base to five million customers by 2017.

“One of IFC’s core objectives is to promote inclusive finance that benefits the small-scale business sector—an engine of inclusive growth and job creation,” Eme Essien Lore, IFC’s Country Manager for Nigeria, said. “Our relationship with LAPO Microfinance Bank will help us reach out to the low income people in Nigeria to improve financial inclusion and help grow the economy.”

“We are taking further steps to increase our reach to more low income earners and more micro, small and medium enterprises,” Godwin Ehigiamusoe, Managing Director/CEO of LAPO Microfinance Bank, said. “IFC’s long term support has helped us and we hope this new project will lead to enhanced financial access for more financially excluded Nigerians.”

IFC is a leading investor in microfinance institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a portfolio that includes 25 microfinance institutions across 13 countries in the sub-continent with over 2.6 million borrowers and 12.7 million depositors that constitute microenterprises and low-income households.

Chibuike Oguh is Financial Nigeria's Frontier Markets Analyst