Accra, Jan. 20, 2026 – When the maize harvest finally came in at Garu in the Upper East Region, Anaba Lamisi stood quietly at the edge of her farm, watching bags of grain pile up under a makeshift shed.
Two years ago, she could barely cultivate enough land to feed her household.
Today, she has more maize, rice and soya beans than at any point in her farming life. Yet instead of celebration, her face showed worry.
“The yield is good, but the prices are low. Imagine you take a loan to farm, and at the end of the season, you cannot not even get back what you invested. That is our fear as farmers,” she said softly.
Ms Lamisi is one of thousands of beneficiaries of a US$4 million microcredit facility established under Ghana’s Post-COVID-19 Skills Development and Productivity Enhancement Project (PSDPEP), supported by the African Development Bank (AfDB).
The intervention is designed to help women and youth-owned micro, small and medium-sized enterprises recover from the economic shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in agriculture and agribusiness.
Across the Upper East, Northern and other regions, the credit facility has enabled farmers who lost livelihoods during the pandemic to return to productive activity.
But as a mid-term review of the project reveals, increased productivity has also exposed a familiar structural weakness in Ghana’s agricultural value chain: weak market linkages.
A lifeline after COVID-19
At Danugu in the Garu District, Adamu Combat, a maize, soya beans and sorghum farmer, remembers how the pandemic disrupted everything from access to inputs to credit.
“Before this project, loans from other institutions came with interest rates of 25 to 30 per cent,” he recalls.
Mr Combat says, “It was very difficult. Sometimes you work the whole season just to pay interest.”
Through the microcredit facility, loans were offered at a concessionary interest rate of 12 per cent per annum, with flexible repayment terms. For Mr Combat, the difference was immediate.
“In the past, I tried cultivating 50 acres, but paying back was difficult. With this reduced interest rate, I scaled down to about 25 acres and managed it better,” he said.
He admits: “It has helped me take care of my children’s education, health care and feeding.”
Like Ms Lamisi, Mr Combat’s main challenge is no longer production, but sales as he acknowledges, “We produce so much, but we cannot sell.”
“We are appealing to the Government to help us get better prices so that we can repay our loans and continue farming.”
Women at the centre
Women account for the majority of beneficiaries under the project.
Out of more than 3,500 MSMEs supported nationwide, nearly 70 per cent are women, many of them operating in rural and peri-urban communities.
Madam Deborah Alalbila, a beneficiary farmer from Garu and a community leader, says the project had transformed women’s farming activities.
“The support has helped us expand our farms and increase yields, especially in maize production,” she says and adds that, “we are eternally grateful.”
However, she notes that a concern has become common across farming communities in the region.
Despite visible gains in production as a result of the credit facility, the absence of assured markets continues to weigh heavily on farmers.
With barns full and yields exceeding expectations, many are forced to sell at low prices or watch their produce deteriorate, turning what should be a season of profit into one of anxiety.
For these farmers, increased output without reliable buyers has replaced one struggle with another, highlighting the fragile link between productivity and sustainable livelihoods.
“We can now produce more, but without ready markets, the benefits are limited. If markets are secured, this project will change lives completely.” Madam Alalbila emphasizes.
How the credit works
The microcredit facility was channelled through participating financial and non-financial institutions, including rural banks such as BESSFA Rural Bank, which operates in parts of the Upper East Region.
Mr Adams Ibrahim, Credit Manager at BESSFA Rural Bank, explains that the loans were designed not only to provide cash, but to support a shift from subsistence to commercial agriculture.
“We provide farmers with access to affordable loans for agro-inputs and improved seeds,” he confirms.
In many cases, seedlings and Yara fertilisers are supplied directly to reduce the risk of funds being diverted.
Loans are offered at 12 per cent interest over a period of up to 24 months, with a moratorium of about five months to allow farmers to harvest before repayment begins.
According to the bank, repayment performance has generally been strong, and that “In some cases, we have recorded 100 per cent repayment, and in others 99 per cent.”
Mr Ibrahim adds that, “where there are delays, it is often because farmers overproduce and struggle to find ready markets.”
Numbers behind the stories
So far, GH₵52,392,164.00 has been disbursed to youth and women-owned SMEs nationwide.
In total, 3,558 MSMEs, comprising 1,801 males and 1,757 females, have benefited from the credit facility.
Beyond credit, PSDPEP has broader goals, including skills development, infrastructure improvements in higher education for the health sector, and public communication on health and MSMEs.
The project also seeks to enhance women’s access to credit and financial literacy, while supporting the formalisation of existing women-owned businesses.
It is expected to benefit at least 24,800 direct beneficiaries and about 50,000 indirectly, with 60 per cent of its financing classified as climate adaptation support.
Assessing the impact
Mr Abass-Adams Nurudeen, Chief Executive Officer of the Social Investment Fund and Project Coordinator says the assessment was intended to determine whether the microcredit facility was meeting its core objectives.
“The project was designed to help SMEs whose livelihoods were lost as a result of COVID-19 to regain their footing,” the CEO tells the Ghana News Agency during a mid-term review in Tamale in the Northern Region.
“After almost three years, we needed to see how it is impacting beneficiaries on the ground.”
The review, he said, had yielded valuable lessons and that, “One key learning is that microcredit should not stand alone.”
Mr Nurudeen further states that, “If you provide credit for women to go into farming, you must anticipate issues like bumper harvests and lack of markets.”
According to the SIF CEO, future interventions should adopt a more integrated approach by linking credit to off-takers and aggregators within the same value chain.
He points out that, “If we empower off-takers to buy produce at fair prices, farmers can repay their loans, the funds can revolve to others, and everyone benefits. This also reduces the risk of default and strengthens the entire system.”
AfDB backs MSME recovery
Dr Patience Ekoh-Ugonma, Principal Social Economist and Task Manager at the African Development Bank, described the microcredit facility as a critical recovery tool for MSMEs affected by COVID-19.
So far, approximately US$4 million has been made available under the project, with the entire amount fully disbursed to beneficiaries across the country to support recovery and boost productivity.
Nearly 4,000 beneficiaries nationwide have accessed the facility, with productivity, particularly in agriculture, increasing significantly.
Some farmers, she states, reported yield increases of up to four times compared to pre-project levels.
However, she confirms that increased productivity has brought new challenges, and that “Farmers are overproducing without ready markets.”
Drawing on experiences from other African countries, she urges stronger state involvement in commodity aggregation and storage.
“In countries where productivity has increased, governments step in at harvest time to buy produce, store it and resell when market conditions improve. This stabilises prices and increases farmers’ incomes,” she explained.
She describes repayment performance under the project as encouraging, with some participating organisations recording 100 per cent recovery.
Dr Ekoh-Ugonma is optimistic that the project is achieving its objective and that “funds can revolve and reach more beneficiaries.”
Looking ahead
Back in Garu, Ms Lamisi says her hope is simple as they want to continue farming and improve their lives, “but we need markets that give us fair prices.”
For Mr Combat, the intervention came at a critical moment, but pleads that “If government and partners can help us sell what we produce, then this project will truly change our communities.”
As the mid-term review of PSDPEP shows, affordable credit has helped thousands of women and youth-led SMEs recover from the pandemic’s blow.
The challenge now is to ensure that increased productivity translates into sustainable incomes by closing the gap between farm and market, and turning bumper harvests into lasting prosperity.
Source: GNA