Ghana Leads Global Ecosystem Building and Funding Efforts

Innovative Ecosystem Deals and Developments in 2023

"Time and again we have seen that flexible, affordable finance has unlocked growth, employment creation and greater business resilience deepening these businesses' impact on poverty alleviation."

As we begin the final quarter of the year, I have been reflecting on the Aspen Institute's recent ANDE Annual Conference in Accra (their first ever outside of the US and their most successful, well-attended to date).

Ghana's Entrepreneurship Ecosystem has been leading the way and making remarkable progress this year despite the myriad of global, interconnected crises, with several exciting, collaborative developments at National, Pan-African and Global levels:

1. The World Bank and Ghana's National Entrepreneurship Innovation Programme (NEIP) disbursed $7 million to a number of Hubs as part of the NEIP Hubs Acceleration Grant Programme. This kind of innovative technical assistance facility designed specifically to address the needs of the Entrepreneurship Support Organisations (ESOs) and Hubs has been broadly welcomed by the industry for its innovative, flexible design and its focus on building the resilience and quality of the country's ESO service provision as well as the growth outcomes of the small businesses they serve. Funding of this nature is what we have been calling for in the industry to address the needs of under-resourced ESOs in the provision of critical services to SMEs in their communities. We look forward to the benchmarking and monitoring of this Programme's results over the coming year or two and look forward to more of this funding.
2. Impact Investing Ghana , (IIGh) Ghana's National Advisory Board on Impact Investment and ESO Collaborative continues to demonstrate what should become a blueprint on how Impact Investing Advisory Boards and Taskforces should be structured and engage with non-traditional stakeholders like Pension Funds for example to unlock capital for the SDGs. With a number of research, mapping, market development and practical recommendations for entrepreneurial ecosystem strengthening, we have a growing body of evidence to drive catalytic capital to this space. As a Gender advocate and practitioner, I am particularly excited to see IIGh join 2X Global, the go-to global membership and field-building organization focused on unlocking gender-smart capital at scale to deepen the impact of capital flowing into crucial thematic investment areas, particularly those related to gender equality. From the Pan-African and Global perspective, we now have the Africa Impact Investing Group brings together African National Advisory Boards (NABs) for Impact Investing and task forces to build a stronger ecosystem for Impact Investing across the continent. The Africa Impact Investing Group is a regional collaboration of the?Global?Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG) .
3. There is growing evidence to show that lowering the barriers that traditional financial institutions often raise against working with small businesses and women in particular - including unrealistic collateral requirements, expensive interest rates and repayment schedules that don’t match the revenue patterns of the business - makes business sense, often seeing repayment rates as high as 95%. According to Argidius Foundation "Time and again we have seen that flexible, affordable finance has unlocked growth, employment creation and greater business resilience deepening these businesses impact on poverty alleviation." This was a view shared at the recent The Aspen Institute Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs session hosted by Development Bank Ghana where Private Finance Institution partners were urged to build bridges with the Entrepreneurship Support Organisations at a National level to ensure elements of capacity strengthening, pre and post-investment technical assistance at the centre of SME support service delivery with commercial loans based on sales revenues and repayments tied to their business performance.
4. Ci Gaba (meaning 'Progress' in a local Ghanaian dialect) is being set up as a $75m West Africa-focused, blended-finance Fund of Funds to invest in local capital providers to advance the SDGs. The goal of the fund is to unlock financing from international and local funders especially local pension funds for Small and Growing Businesses. The Fund will be in local currency and domiciled in Ghana with the design phase supported by the Global Steering Group for Impact Investments (GSG), the World Economic Forum (WEF), and Collaborative for Frontier Financing. Stay tuned for more exciting updates.
5. H.E. Harriet Thompson, British High Commissioner to Ghana opened the "Made In West Africa" Day at ANDE's Annual Conference showcasing entrepreneurship ingenuity from the sub-region. She announced that “British International Investment (BII) is stepping in to support Ghanaian MSEs. BII has created a new fund totalling $50 million to distribute funds ranging from $500,000 to $5 million to qualifying Ghanaian SMEs. This initiative underscores the belief that the very best champions for Ghana’s growth are its businesses, both big and small.”

For more about the trends and developments in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Ghana and the Global South, visit Associated Press .