The GSA, in partnership with Mastercard Foundation as part of the Young Africa Works Program, is implementing the Shea Business Empowerment Program (SBEP): a 3-year strategy to develop and enhance shea cooperatives and SMEs in accessing capital, developing critical skills and market linkages in the shea value chain. The program is implemented in partnership with Advans Ghana, Women for Change, the SOFTtribe, AgroCenta, and GSA Sustainability Partners.

The GSA has selected Tradeline Consult Ltd to support SMEs working in the shea value chain in Ghana to improve their business operations, finance and accounting to increase access to finance for women.

There is growing recognition of the important role small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play in economic development. The SMEs constitute about 90% of total business units in Ghana and account for 60% of Ghana’s employed labour force. They are often described as efficient and prolific job creators, the seeds of big businesses and the fuel of national economic engines.

Tradeline consult has partnered with the USAID-Mobilising Finance for Agriculture Project ( MFA) to support SMEs especially women in the soy, maize, shea, mango, cashew, and cowpea value chains. Therefore, Tradeline utilized the opportunity to concentrate on the shea value chains to target working with 10,000 women. As part of the strategy to achieve that, the partnership with GSA to build the capacity of their SMEs members especially women in business management and access to finance.

Tradeline Consult conducted 1 day of technical and hands-on training and followed by 4 – weeks of business coaching for 25 SMEs to enhance their capacity and competitiveness.  The training equipped the participants with finance and accounting skills. And provided critical solutions which was a major problem for the SMEs, who complained bitterly of bookkeeping needs and inability to afford the services.

Tradeline Consult partnered with the Finance Factory initiative to commit to providing dedicated graduate trainees to be actively dedicated to the SMEs to support them with their bookkeeping needs at their own convenience and store the data online using robust user-friendly accounting software.

One of the participants iterated that, the training was very practical and exposed them to their weaknesses in financial management. The offer from the finance factory to dedicate their staff to our businesses full time to help us with bookkeeping and access to finance was a real blessing.

The training program was held at the Mariam Hotel in Tamale Ghana on July 28, 2022.  In attendance were the program leaders of the GSA and Mastercard Foundation who took turns to share their organizations’ commitment to this program and then Advans Savings and Loans and Cellulant Ghana who presented their product and service offerings to the MSMEs present.

Tradeline  Consult operates in Ghana and Malawi to provide innovative business advisory services to SMEs with a special focus on access to finance. The company have facilitated over $50m for SMEs across different sectors. Some services include access to market, finance, training, digitization and management support. At the heart of the company’s growing success are innovation and creativity.