- GEA Puts Finance, Digitalisation and Market Access at Heart of New MSME Plan
The Ghana Enterprises Agency is preparing a new five-year strategy that could reshape how the state supports micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, with greater emphasis on whether businesses survive, expand and become competitive rather than simply how many entrepreneurs participate in government programmes.
The agency has begun consultations with public institutions, private-sector organisations, development partners, financial institutions, business associations and academia as it develops its 2026–2030 Strategic Plan. The process, under the theme “Aligning Development Partnerships for Sustainable MSME Growth and Economic Transformation,” is intended to identify gaps across Ghana’s enterprise ecosystem and improve coordination among institutions supporting businesses.
At the centre of the proposed strategy is a shift in how success is measured. Enterprise-support programmes in Ghana have traditionally been assessed through indicators such as the number of entrepreneurs trained, businesses financed or beneficiaries reached, but the GEA wants greater attention paid to what happens to businesses after the intervention ends.
“GEA’s ambition for this period is to be judged less by the number of programmes we run and more by the durability of the enterprises that pass through them,” Margaret Ansei, Chief Executive Officer of the agency, said. “That is a harder standard, and a fairer one.”
The distinction could have significant implications for enterprise policy because programme participation does not necessarily translate into stronger businesses. An entrepreneur may receive training but remain unable to access working capital, while financing alone may have limited impact if the business cannot find customers, adopt technology or overcome infrastructure and regulatory constraints.
The proposed strategy therefore brings several of those constraints into a single framework, with priorities including enterprise competitiveness, access to finance, digital transformation, market access, skills development, innovation and sustainability. Institutional strengthening and inclusive entrepreneurship are also expected to form part of the agency’s approach through 2030.
The more difficult challenge may be coordination. Ghana has no shortage of institutions supporting enterprise development, but interventions from ministries, banks, development agencies, business associations and international partners can often operate separately, leaving businesses with multiple forms of assistance without necessarily resolving the specific bottleneck preventing growth.
Ms Ansei said the agency wants partnerships to be treated as complementary economic tools rather than simply institutional relationships. “I would rather we treated partnership here as an economic proposition, where a development partner’s technical expertise, a bank’s balance sheet, a ministry’s regulatory reach, and GEA’s presence on the ground each solve a different part of the same constraint facing an enterprise trying to grow,” she said.
That model could be particularly important in addressing access to finance, which remains one of the most persistent constraints facing smaller businesses. The difficulty is not simply the availability of money, but whether enterprises possess the records, collateral, governance structures and financial capacity required to convince banks and other lenders that they can absorb and repay capital.
Improving finance access will therefore require more than creating new funding schemes. It will also require stronger financial management within businesses, better credit information, appropriate risk-sharing structures and closer collaboration between lenders and institutions responsible for enterprise development.
Digitalisation is emerging as another central competitiveness issue. For small businesses, digital tools increasingly influence payments, accounting, inventory management, marketing, customer acquisition and access to markets, meaning technology adoption is becoming closely connected to productivity rather than being treated merely as an innovation programme.
The challenge for GEA will be ensuring that digital interventions produce measurable commercial gains. Training a business to use a digital platform has limited economic value if the technology does not result in higher sales, lower costs, stronger financial records or access to new customers.
Market access presents a similar test. Businesses can become more productive and still remain small if they cannot move beyond local markets, making stronger links to larger companies, procurement opportunities, supply chains and export markets critical to the agency’s ambition to help enterprises scale.
Professor Nathaniel Boso, Chairman of the GEA Board, said stronger alignment among institutions would be central to the strategy. “Alignment must mean more than working alongside one another; it must mean working from a shared understanding of the gaps that remain in Ghana’s enterprise ecosystem and coordinating our interventions to address them,” he said.
That approach would require more than periodic stakeholder meetings. Effective coordination could depend on clearer institutional responsibilities, better data-sharing and common performance indicators that allow policymakers to determine whether supported businesses are becoming stronger over time.
It could also require the GEA to track enterprises long after a grant, training programme or financing intervention has ended. Measures such as business survival, revenue growth, employment creation, productivity, market expansion and the ability to attract private capital would provide a more demanding assessment of whether public support is generating lasting economic capacity.
Such an approach would mark an important change in accountability. It would make it easier to distinguish programmes that provide temporary relief from interventions that help businesses build the capabilities required to operate independently and withstand economic shocks.
Implementation, however, remains the principal risk. Enterprise performance is affected by factors beyond the GEA’s direct control, including interest rates, taxation, inflation, energy costs, infrastructure, regulatory burdens and consumer demand, meaning even well-designed programmes can struggle in an adverse operating environment.
The agency will therefore need to match its ambitions with institutional capacity and reliable data. A strategy that correctly identifies enterprise constraints but cannot coordinate institutions, measure outcomes or sustain support over time would risk reproducing many of the weaknesses it is seeking to address.
For Ghana, the stakes are considerable because MSMEs form an important part of employment, commerce and domestic production. Their ability to grow into larger, more productive businesses will influence whether enterprise policy contributes meaningfully to industrialisation, formalisation and job creation.
The consultations are expected to shape GEA’s programmes, partnerships and institutional priorities through 2030. The real test will be whether entrepreneurs eventually find it easier to access finance, adopt technology, acquire relevant skills, reach customers and build businesses capable of surviving beyond the life of a government or donor programme.
That is why the shift towards durability matters. If the agency succeeds in making business survival and growth, rather than programme activity, the central measure of performance, Ghana’s enterprise policy could move towards a more mature model in which public support is judged by the economic capacity it leaves behind.
