Accra, Ghana, October 3, 2026: Beatrice Oppong, who runs a groceries business, told Citi News in January that some lenders charge as much as GH¢100 a week, or GH¢300 a month, in interest alone. Her profit margins, she said, are too thin to carry that.
Ghana’s Women’s Development Bank (WDB) was promised to address problems like hers. Government says it has placed GH¢400 million with the Bank of Ghana as the bank’s initial capital, and expects the bank to open fully before the end of 2026.
Yet putting money into a bank that is still being created is not the same as putting money into the hands of women who need credit. This story is about the gap between the two.
The road from promise to bank
The timeline below sets out each step. The sections after it explain what each step means and what it leaves undone.
What did Ghana promise women in 2024?
At the August 2024 launch of the NDC’s youth manifesto, Mahama said the bank would provide funds to one million women. He said it would focus on job creation and on the difficulty women-owned businesses have in getting credit, with financial services tailored to women entrepreneurs.
He repeated the pledge in his State of the Nation Address on 27 February 2025, and said the 2025 Budget would carry the initial funding.
This was not simply a promise to build a bank. It was a promise about who would get access to money. That question runs through everything that follows.
What happened to the GH¢51.3 million seed funding?
Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson delivered on the pledge on 11 March 2025. In the 2025 Budget he allocated GH¢51.3 million as seed funding for the bank.
The allocation moved the promise from a manifesto into the national budget. It gave no date for the launch, as GNA noted at the time.
A budget allocation commits money. It does not put a loan in a woman’s hands.
Why do women struggle to get business loans in Ghana?
Forson gave the government’s answer in the same Budget. He said the bank would remove the collateral and equity requirements that make it hard for women to borrow from traditional banks.
The case rests on numbers. Trade Minister Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare has said women own about 44 percent of Ghana’s micro, small and medium-sized businesses.
Women can and do borrow from existing banks. The difficulty is the conditions attached to formal loans. A lender may ask for business records, proof of registration, a bank account and an asset as security. Many women do not hold land or other major assets in their names, so collateral becomes a barrier before the lender looks at the business itself.
Why did Ghana allocate another GH¢401 million?
The 2026 Budget, presented in November 2025, added GH¢401 million on top of the seed funding. Reports on the allocation say the money would help the bank meet the Bank of Ghana’s minimum capital requirement and fund low-interest loans for market women, traders and small-scale businesses.
Together, the two budgets set aside GH¢452.3 million. The figure to watch is a different one. The Budget allocated GH¢401 million. By July, the Finance Minister said GH¢400 million had been placed in escrow at the Bank of Ghana as the bank’s capital. One figure is what the Budget set aside. The other is what the Minister says has been deposited.
Ofosu-Adjare described the GH¢401 million as funding to establish and start the bank. She said it answers the financing gap that has held back women-owned businesses.
Is the Women’s Development Bank a real bank yet?
Not yet. A bank passes through separate milestones: a political promise, a budget allocation, incorporation, capital, a licence, operations and, finally, lending. The WDB has cleared some of them.
WDB GH Ltd was incorporated on 26 January 2026. That gave the project a company that can own property, sign contracts and employ staff.
EXPLAINER
Incorporation. The legal process of creating a company as a separate legal entity.
Banking licence. Official permission from the Bank of Ghana for an institution to operate as a bank or other licensed deposit-taking institution.
Incorporation does not make a company a bank. Under the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930), the Bank of Ghana alone licenses banks and specialised deposit-taking institutions.
On 24 June, Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Nyarko Ampem told Parliament that the company had been registered and government was waiting for an operating licence. An application is not an approval. The Bank of Ghana must first be satisfied on matters that include shareholders, directors and key management, and the source of the capital.
As of 2 October 2026:
• Incorporated? Yes.
• Licence application submitted? Yes.
• Capital deposited? Government says yes.
• Licence approved? Not publicly confirmed.
• Open for women to borrow? Not yet.
What does it mean that GH¢400 million is with the Bank of Ghana?
On 9 July, Forson said government had paid GH¢400 million into an escrow account at the Bank of Ghana, and that the Bank of Ghana had begun assessing the bank. He added that government still had to appoint a board and management team, which the licensing process requires.
Two weeks later, in the Mid-Year Review, he told Parliament the money was the bank’s initial capital, deposited to meet the licensing requirement.
EXPLAINER
Escrow. Money held by a trusted third party until agreed conditions are met.
This is not GH¢400 million lent to women. It is money set aside as the bank’s capital while the regulator does its work. A budget allocation is not a loan either.
When will the bank start giving loans?
The government’s stated timetable is before the end of 2026. That is a target, not evidence that lending has begun.
The Bank of Ghana licence stands between a prepared institution and an operating bank. A bank cannot be judged by its opening capital. It has to be judged by what happens after the doors open.
Can women apply for a Women’s Development Bank loan now?
No, not yet, based on the latest public information. The licence is not publicly confirmed, and the board and management team had still to be appointed when the Finance Minister last updated Parliament.
Women are already asking when the bank will start. In July, the Abossey Okai Spare Parts Dealers Association said its women members wanted to know. The Ghana Union of Traders Association’s vice president, Joseph Paddy, said the bank has taken too long to arrive, and noted that some traders borrow at rates as high as 10 per cent a month.
What are women’s groups asking the bank to do?
The Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) gave one of the clearest answers in September. At a forum on gender-responsive budgeting, the head of its secretariat, Patricia Blankson Akakpo, urged government to make the bank work for rural businesses, especially those owned by women, youth and marginalised people.
She welcomed the allocations but asked about the bank’s mandate, structure and target beneficiaries, and how beneficiaries would be selected. She also asked whether it can resolve the collateral requirements, documentation demands and high interest rates that have kept rural women out of traditional banking.
NETRIGHT has made recommendations to the Finance Ministry on the 2027 Budget. Akakpo urged government to build on women-friendly systems such as village savings and loans associations, rather than impose rigid banking models, and to publish disaggregated data on who receives the money.
The problem the bank is meant to solve has not gone away. On 1 October, Guillaume Valence, managing director of Advans Ghana, said collateral requirements, spousal consent and signature validation still block women entrepreneurs from credit.
Bank of Ghana Collateral Registry data cited at the same event show the gap. In the second quarter of 2026, women borrowers and women-owned businesses made up 82.8 per cent of secured credit transactions but received GH¢3.1 billion, against GH¢19.4 billion for men and male-owned businesses.
Why do some experts question creating a new women’s bank?
The WDB is entering a financial system where lenders already target women. In March 2026, Stanbic Bank Ghana, the International Finance Corporation and Mastercard committed US$600,000 to build finance and support for women-owned small and medium-sized businesses. On 30 September, Advans Ghana launched Mmaa Mpuntuo, a programme backed by Development Bank Ghana that offers reduced interest rates and flexible collateral to women-owned businesses.
Economist Professor Peter Quartey, a former director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), argued in March 2025 that government should set up women’s desks inside existing banks instead. He pointed to their branch networks and said GH¢51 million could not capitalise a fully functioning bank. He repeated the call to work through existing commercial banks in January 2026.
Government chose a different route. The WDB will therefore have to show what a specialised institution can do differently from existing banks and programmes.
What should women look for when the bank opens?
The size of the allocation alone cannot tell us whether the bank will work. The questions that matter to a woman running a business are practical:
• How much can I borrow?
• What interest rate will I pay?
• What collateral will I need, and can I apply without owning land?
• Can informal businesses apply, or must I register first?
• Can the bank assess me through my own business records?
• How long will approval take?
• Where will I apply, and will rural women have access?
• Will there be training and advice as well as loans?
The biggest question is this; what happens when a woman cannot offer the security a conventional bank asks for? Those answers will tell us more about the WDB than any launch ceremony.
The real question is when the money reaches women
A manifesto promise became a budget allocation. The bank was incorporated. Government says GH¢400 million has been deposited as initial capital. The Bank of Ghana will decide whether the bank can operate.
None of those steps puts working capital into a woman’s business. That happens when she can apply, qualify and receive financing on terms she can repay.
For the trader who pays interest every week, the farmer who needs money before the next planting season, or the owner who wants to buy equipment and hire a worker, that is when the Women’s Development Bank becomes real. Until then, Ghana has a funded promise. The next chapter is whether it becomes credit in the hands of women.
