Development Bank Ghana (DBG) has celebrated its fifth anniversary with a customer appreciation and business dialogue event for entrepreneurs, while unveiling a new flagship initiative to boost women-led businesses across the country.

The event in Kumasi combined heartfelt testimonies from end-borrowers with strategic discussions on Ghana’s financing ecosystem and the official launch of the “DBG Women’s Lending Programme”, a dedicated facility designed to tackle longstanding barriers faced by women entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs from various sectors shared personal stories of how DBG-backed financing, accessed through Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs), helped them overcome challenges and achieve growth.

The dialogue fostered open exchanges between business owners, financial institutions, and DBG leadership on what works, persistent obstacles, and ways to strengthen support for underserved sectors and regions.
Chief Executive Officer of Development Bank Ghana, Prof. Randolph Nsor-Ambala, says the development bank aims to mitigate financial disparities.

“Five years ago, DBG was established to do one thing: close the financing gap preventing Ghana’s most productive businesses from reaching their potential. Today we celebrate not what we have done, but what the entrepreneurs in this room have done with the capital, the tenors and the terms we were able to provide. Their success is our mandate made visible,” he said.

The event also led to the unveiling of the DBG Women’s Lending Programme, which seeks to address structural challenges such as high collateral requirements, stringent documentation, limited access to productive assets, and elevated borrowing costs that disproportionately affect women-owned and women-led businesses.

Operating through DBG’s wholesale model, the programme will provide funds to PFIs that demonstrate tailored offerings for women borrowers, including simplified documentation, flexible collateral options, appropriately sized loans, competitive pricing, and integrated business advisory support.

“Women entrepreneurs are critical to Ghana’s economic future. Through the DBG Women’s Lending Programme and our participating financial institutions, we are creating practical pathways for more women-owned businesses to access the capital they need to grow, create jobs and build resilient enterprises. Five years in, this is what inclusive development finance looks like in practice,” he said.

The programme is expected to benefit an estimated 1,000 women-owned and women-led businesses between 2026 and 2028.

Eligible sectors include agriculture and agribusiness, manufacturing, education, technology, creative industries, hospitality, and services. It adopts a persona-based design framework to cater to diverse women entrepreneurs from smallholder farmers in the Northern Region to manufacturing SME owners in Kumasi.

Regional activation events in the Ashanti and Northern Regions will follow to connect more women with financing and business development support.

Since its establishment in 2021, DBG has focused on bridging Ghana’s long-term financing gap by providing wholesale capital and capacity-building to financial institutions nationwide. The new Women’s Lending Programme adds a strong gender lens, with plans to generate evidence for further scale-up and attract additional development partner resources.