International Journal of Development and Sustainability ISSN: 2186-8662 – www.isdsnet.com/ijds Volume 6 Number 8 (2017): Pages 783-791 ISDS Article ID: IJDS17063001 The determinants of women entrepreneurs’ access to micro credit programme: A case study of Cowries Microfinance Bank (CMB) Lagos, Nigeria Adijat Olubukola Olateju 1* , Abubakar Wambai Aminu 2 , Abdulaziz Shehu 3 , Rasaq Akonji Danmola 1 1 Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Economics, Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos, Nigeria 2 Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Economics, Bayero University Kano, Kano State, Nigeria. 3 Economics Department, Federal University Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State. Abstract Women in Nigeria often participate more than their male counterpart in entrepreneurial activities and access to credit has been a major hindrance in their performance in this sector. To ensure inclusive growth, access to credit is of paramount importance especially in developing countries where more women are often the major participants in entrepreneurial activities. This paper examines the factors that determine credit accessibility among female entrepreneurs in Lagos state, Nigeria. A sample of 359 women entrepreneurs was selected from Cowries Microfinance Bank (CMB) through a simple random sampling technique and analysed with a probit regression. The results of the analysis indicate that all the variables that were used in measuring the determinants of women’s access in microcredit programme are significant and have the expected signs except the variable age which is not significant. It is therefore, recommended that microfinance in the study area should consider the following factors: the marital status, years of experience in the business, educational level, poverty status, household size, and the income of income when given out loan to women entrepreneurs. As this will go a long way in ensuring that the loan product is given to the right people so that the benefit of the loan can be achieved. Keywords: Microfinance; Microenterprises; Micro Entrepreneurs; Credit; Microcredit * Corresponding author. E-mail address: bukolarasaq4@yahoo.com Published by ISDS LLC, Japan | Copyright © 2017 by the Author(s) | This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cite this article as: Olateju, A.O., Aminu, A.W., Shehu, A. and Danmola, R.A. (2017), “The determinants of women entrepreneurs’ access to micro credit programme: A case study of Cowries Microfinance Bank (CMB) Lagos, Nigeria”, International Journal of Development and Sustainability, Vol. 6 No. 8, pp. 783-791.