Overview

CTED conducts pioneering research on the impact of access to credit and market building for smallholder farmers in Ghana. Building on our previous collaborations with the Government, including work that supported the establishment of the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX) in 2018, our work connects economic research with real-world policy interventions to improve livelihoods.

Recognizing that farmers have limited access to finance and face high input costs and post-harvest losses, CTED launched the Credit Project to provide targeted financial support and agricultural inputs to our farmers. This includes services like plowing and threshing, physical inputs like fertilizer and pesticides as well as access to a warehouse we operate on loan from the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

There are about 50,000 smallholder farmers living in our area of study, of whom 10,000 are registered with CTED and 1,000 have thus far requested credit. Ultimately, we aim to provide credit to over 20,000 famers. Moreover, the insights we generate from this research are fed directly into local, national and regional policy channels to improve economic stability for smallholder farmers in Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.