IFC Deploys $53M Blended Facility with Absa Bank Ghana and Complete Farmer to Scale Ag-Finance

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has made two capital deployments in Ghana to expand commercial agricultural liquidity, targeting smallholder integration, supply chain traceability, and AgTech infrastructure. The interventions combine institutional credit facilities and direct tech-enabled growth capital to address systematic financing deficits across the domestic agrarian value chain.

Under the primary transaction, IFC and the Private Sector Window of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) are deploying an unfunded risk participation facility of up to $50 million to Absa Bank Ghana LTD. The risk-sharing mechanism will enable Absa Bank Ghana to extend liquidity to Licensed Buying Companies during the cocoa purchasing season. The facility targets the seasonal procurement of traceable cocoa from more than 139,000 smallholder farmers, backing a sector that includes nearly 800,000 registered producers nationwide.

The capital mechanism incorporates blended finance structures supported by GAFSP’s Private Sector Window, which is managed by IFC and funded by the governments of Australia, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The facility provides credit risk mitigation designed to sustain commercial purchasing volumes while enforcing production practices aligned with Paris Agreement climate directives.

Concurrently, IFC is channeling direct capital into Complete Farmer, a Ghanaian AgTech platform operating across eight domestic regions and Togo. The financial package comprises a $2.4 million convertible loan sourced via the Business Investment Financing Track (BIFT) of GAFSP, alongside an additional $480,000 advisory facility designed to upgrade systemic operational capacity and scale its input financing framework.

The dual intervention targets the structural credit gap facing commercial-scale smallholders who are unable to access formal commercial bank credit. By pairing Absa Bank Ghana’s balance sheet capacity with Complete Farmer’s digital infrastructure, the strategy addresses both institutional risk-aversion in seasonal commodity purchasing and credit delivery mechanisms for farm-level inputs and agronomic services.

“Too many farmers with the capacity to grow commercially still struggle to access the financing they need to do so. Over the years, we have focused on building the technology, data and market infrastructure that makes it possible to better understand farmers, support their production and connect what they grow to real demand. Our partnership with IFC allows us to build on that foundation and scale our input financing model, so that more farmers have the resources and support they need to grow sustainably and participate more meaningfully in agricultural markets.”

Desmond Koney, CEO, Complete Farmer.

Complete Farmer, which currently maintains a network of over 72,000 farmers and eight fulfillment centers, will deploy the convertible debt to scale its proprietary technology, data networks, and input supply channels. The venture targets an expansion of its network to reach 240,000 smallholder farmers by 2030, integrating credit, input delivery, and off-taker market access into a single digital platform.