Access Bank and ITC sign SME support deal for 14 African countries, starting in Ghana

Pinned summary · as of 06:33

Access Bank's Africa office and the International Trade Centre (ITC) have agreed to work together so that small firms in 14 African countries can find funding, customers and training. Ghana is where the three-year effort begins, and the two sides sealed the arrangement with a memorandum of understanding in New York during the UN General Assembly.

What we know

• Access Africa Office, the coordinating arm for Access Bank Plc's subsidiaries across Africa, and the ITC signed a memorandum of understanding in New York during the UN General Assembly to start a three-year partnership for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
• The countries covered are Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia in the south; Kenya, Rwanda and the United Republic of Tanzania in the east; and Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo elsewhere on the continent.
• The programme opens with a trial in Ghana. Between September 2026 and June 2027, a cohort of Ghanaian small businesses will take part, with women-led firms placed first in line.
• Five priority areas guide the partnership: creating jobs through SMEs; finance, especially for businesses owned by women and young people; keeping enterprises sustainable; building skills, including digital trade; and reaching markets, including trade between African countries within the AfCFTA framework.
• The Ghana trial will rely on ITC's digital learning tools and its training-of-trainers courses, run together with Access Africa Office staff. From 2027 the partners plan to add countries and programmes, including advanced courses on sustainability standards and digital marketplace tools.
• Pamela Coke-Hamilton, ITC's Executive Director, said small businesses across Africa struggle most with getting finance when they want to trade, and described ITC's joint work with the bank as a way of giving firms the know-how, contacts and buyers they need to grow.
• Seyi Kumapayi, Access Bank's Executive Director for African Subsidiaries, said capital, market access and trade-ready skills must come together, because "finance alone does not get a small business to scale". He said the first beneficiaries will be women-led enterprises and other small firms in Ghana, with the ambition of growing trade within Africa and extending financial inclusion.
• Access Bank's network spans 25 countries on three continents, with over 700 branches and more than 63 million customers.

What's disputed / unconfirmed

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  The Vaultz News reported that the partnership's aims match three UN goals: gender equality (Goal 5), decent work and economic growth (Goal 8), and industry, innovation and infrastructure (Goal 9); this has not been confirmed by other reports.
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  YFM Ghana reported Mr Kumapayi as saying the bank's wide presence would be combined with the trade body's specialist knowledge; other reports do not carry that remark.

Why it matters for Ghana

Small businesses in Ghana often struggle to raise capital and find buyers, and the pilot is aimed at exactly those gaps for a chosen group of firms. Women entrepreneurs are given priority in the first phase. Because the pilot covers only a selected cohort, the wider effect on Ghanaian traders and producers will depend on how the scheme expands from 2027.