ITC and Access Bank target small-business growth, starting in Ghana
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the International Trade Centre and Access Africa, the coordinating office for Access Bank’s African subsidiaries, signed a three-year MoU to improve small firms’ access to finance, markets and skills. The five priority areas are job creation, access to finance (with attention to women- and youth-owned firms), business sustainability, capacity building including digital trade skills, and market access including intra-African trade under the AfCFTA.
The pilot runs from September 2026 to June 2027 in Ghana, prioritising women-led enterprises, using ITC’s existing digital learning tools. Expansion to more countries is planned from 2027. The 14 countries named do not include Nigeria, so Nigerian firms should not expect to be covered for now.
The 14 countries named in the MoU are Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The Ghana pilot uses ITC’s existing digital learning tools and training-of-trainers programs, so the model is to train local trainers who then reach more firms.
The agreement follows ITC’s renewal in May of its partnership with the AfCFTA Secretariat, signed on the sidelines of Biashara Afrika 2026, which shifts the focus from building a policy framework to enabling private-sector-led trade, with attention to small businesses including those led by women, youth and smallholder farmers. ITC data cited in coverage of that renewal projects that intra-African trade could grow by an additional US$22 billion a year by 2029.
Source: Zawya via TradingView, 29 September 2026
Road to Nairobi: Training that teaches small exporters digital trade skills can also teach them to register a mark, protect a design, and license their work, a practical point for AAIPS’s focus on trade and industrial transformation.