US$4.8bn SME financing gap exposes Ghana’s credit challenge — A call for swift implementation of open banking, open finance reforms

If Ghana can build an open, secure and interoperable financial-data ecosystem, the country can begin moving from a financial system in which too many SMEs are judged by what they lack, collateral, conventional statements or long credit histories, to one in which they can increasingly be assessed by what they demonstrate: real economic activity, credible cash flows and the capacity to grow.

Open banking, complemented by a broader open-finance architecture, can help Ghana address one of the fundamental problems behind the SME credit challenge: the information gap between businesses that need finance and financial institutions that must assess risk before providing it.

On August 3, 2026, the Bank of Ghana published a Draft Open Banking Directive for Regulated Financial Institutions, signalling a significant step towards a financial ecosystem in which customers can securely and, with their consent, share financial information with authorised third parties.