In the absence, any alternative ACDEP members have provided limited micro-credit services to the rural population for many years, with the support of their development partners to underpin their agriculture, agro-processing, and small enterprise development. Worldwide experience has shown that NGOs are not the best placed to provide an economically and financially sustainable micro-credit service and the experiences of the ACDEP member NGOs lend credence to this. However small-scale rural producers and processors need credit and other financial services to grow their businesses and so need to find an alternative way to access commercial credit..

Background

In Ghana, the introduction of rural banks was intended to provide meet this need, but their expansion, in northern Ghana especially, has been quite slow with only a dozen or so of these banks in the Regions; all located in major towns and cities. The establishment of these rural banks notwithstanding, the major challenges related to credit keep mounting and a large sector potential micro-finance clients remains un-serviced.. Initially to rectify the lapses in credit elsewhere , the marketing company created by ACDEP, SFMC Ltd., was compelled to support farmers’ farming activities with credit. However, the resultant expansion in the client base precipitated a need to find a way to de-link the credit related operations from that of marketing. A new 2-year project called ACDEP Financial Services (AFS) has been developed to provide solutions to these challenges by functioning as an independent profit-making microfinance broker body focused on making credit more accessible to a wider population. They leverage their ability and that of the ACDEP-member NGOs (stations) to monitor the credit of their target beneficiaries more effectively and more efficiently than any financial institution. . Essentially In AFS, ACDEP is developing a truly innovative approach.. AFS is funded by Cordaid and is planned to eventually become an independent brokerage concern.. AFS has also identified the need to transform rural farmers into small-scale entrepreneurs, which then would become more attractive for the financial institutions and other financial services providers. To do this they need to enhance their knowledge in certain topics. Therefore one of the outputs of AFS is to develop and fine-tune a capacity building plan on financial education for rural producers (farmers + small)

Projects