The Women’s Bank must not be a slogan

When Vice-President Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang stood before women entrepreneurs at the Ghana Women Entrepreneurship Summit (GWES) 2026 in Accra, she brought news that many Ghanaian women have waited years to hear.

A committee established to oversee the creation of the Women’s Development Bank has completed its work and submitted a banking licence application to the Bank of Ghana (BoG) through the Ministry of Finance for regulatory approval.

After years of promise, the Women’s Bank is no longer just a manifesto line.

It is a file on the desk of the regulator. It is a proposal waiting to be tested.

But as the applause fades, the hard work begins.

Ghana has a long history of good ideas for women that died in implementation.

The Women’s Development Bank must not join that list.

A frontline financial institution, not a political trophy.

A place where a market woman can walk in and get credit on terms she understands, not a building in Accra with a beautiful signboard and no money to lend.

The statistics explain why this bank is very important.

Women account for approximately eight out of every 10 businesses operating in the informal sector. Eight out of 10.

The woman who wakes at 4 a.m. to go to the market, the woman who runs a chop bar, the woman who sells cloth, the woman who farms a small plot and feeds a family — she is the economy.

Yet women remain underrepresented among large businesses, controlling only about 10 per cent of such enterprises.

Why? The Vice-President gave the answer herself: Many are very willing and disciplined to expand their businesses.

They know their customers, understand their costs, and have broad plans.

However, securing finance on reasonable terms remains a serious challenge for women.

That gap — between 80 per cent of informal businesses and 10 per cent of large businesses — is not a gap of talent. It is a gap of finance.

It is a gap of collateral, of interest rates, of financial literacy, of trust, and of a banking system that was not built for women.

The Women’s Development Bank must close that gap.

First, it must lend differently. It cannot copy the lending model of the commercial banks that have failed women.

It must learn from what already works for women: susu.

Susu collectors understand what banks do not.

They know that a market woman’s cash flow is daily, not monthly.

They know that trust is built by showing up every day.

They know that a small loan repaid quickly is better than a large loan that traps a borrower.

And above all, it must lend at rates women can afford.

If the Women’s Bank charges the same 30 per cent-plus rates as commercial banks, it will have failed before it starts.

Government must capitalise it adequately and ensure it can offer single-digit or low double-digit rates for productive loans, especially for agriculture, processing, and manufacturing.

This is the hardest test, and the one on which Ghanaian state banks have most often failed.

If the bank becomes a place where loans are given to party supporters and never repaid, it will collapse, just as other state banks have collapsed.

And when it collapses, it will not just be a bank that fails. It will be the trust of millions of women that fails.

Let us be clear: Ghana does not need another bank that serves Accra.

It needs a bank that serves the woman in Bolgatanga who processes groundnuts, the woman in Elmina who smokes fish, the woman in Kumasi who sells fabric, and the young graduate in Tamale who wants to start an agro-processing business but has no collateral.

If the Women’s Development Bank does that, it will change Ghana.

It will move women from 10 per cent of large businesses to 20 per cent, to 30 per cent, to half.

It will unlock the economic potential the Vice-President spoke of.

It will prove that when you invest in women, you invest in the whole country.

The Bank of Ghana must now do its due diligence swiftly and rigorously.

The Ministry of Finance must capitalise the bank adequately.

And our women must hold this bank to account.

The promise has been made. Now let us build the bank that keeps it.