The Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) has begun consultations with key stakeholders to align its priorities and strengthen support for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) over the next five years.

The engagement, held under the theme “Aligning Development Partnerships for Sustainable MSME Growth and Economic Transformation,” brought together representatives from the public and private sectors, development partners, business associations, financial institutions, academia and other stakeholders.

The consultations form part of GEA’s preparations for its 2026–2030 Strategic Plan.

They focused on enterprise competitiveness, access to finance, digital transformation, market access, skills development, innovation, sustainability, institutional strengthening and inclusive entrepreneurship.

GEA Chief Executive Officer Margaret Ansei said the Agency wants partnerships to develop practical solutions to the challenges facing businesses.

“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 stated.

Ms Ansei said the Agency also intends to measure the success of its next strategic cycle by the sustainability of the businesses it supports.

“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. That is a harder standard, and a fairer one,” she added.

The 2026–2030 Strategic Plan is expected to strengthen GEA’s institutional capacity, sharpen its strategic focus and improve coordination with development partners and other institutions.

It will also seek to ensure that the Agency’s programmes translate into more sustainable outcomes for Ghanaian businesses.

Board Chairman of GEA, Professor Nathaniel Boso, stressed the need for stakeholders to coordinate their interventions rather than operate independently.

“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 noted.

GEA said the stakeholder engagement is intended to ensure that its priorities reflect the needs of businesses and institutions within the wider enterprise ecosystem.

The Agency is expected to use the outcome of the consultations to shape its programmes, partnerships and institutional priorities through 2030.