GIRSAL has partnered with organizations whose operations and services complement ours, and whose goals align with ours. These strategic alliances enable us to expand our reach, share resources and mitigate risks related to agricultural lending
The DBG provides long-term wholesale financing, credit guarantees, and other services to financial institutions to increase overall lending to priority sectors, including agriculture. GIRSAL will provide technical support to assess agricultural loan applications submitted to DBG, support applicant financial institutions technically, and issue credit guarantees on qualifying loans. Both organizations will also collaborate to provide capacity building and innovative interventions to improve agriculture financing in Ghana.
The Agriculture and Agribusiness Lending Training Course for Financial Institutions was jointly developed with NBC and rolled out in 2020 with funding support from AGRA. The program has since trained 700 mid-level staff from 47 financial institutions (mainly universal banks).
GIRSAL has partnered with ARB APEX Bank to de-risk agricultural financing by Ghana’s rural and community banks (RCBs) through capacity building, technical support, and credit guarantees. The collaboration aims to optimize the expert resources of both parties to promote investment in the agricultural sector and provide institutional capacity for RCBs in Ghana. ARB Apex Bank is a mini central bank for the Rural & Community Banks.
The collaboration provides GCX access to all GIRSAL partner financial institutions and supports the financial institutions to develop Aggregation and Warehouse Receipt financing products to support smallholder farmers. Through this collaboration, GIRSAL will provide Credit Risk Guarantee cover and Technical Assistance to its partner financial institutions financing GCX aggregators, brokers, and smallholder farmers.