The Minister for Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, has reaffirmed the government’s commitment to improving farmers’ access to structured and affordable financing through digital innovation.

Speaking at the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and Fauree Link Ghana Limited in Accra on Monday, the Minister described the agreement as a significant step toward addressing one of Ghana’s most persistent agricultural challenges — access to finance.

The ceremony, held at the Minister’s Conference Room, brought together the Chief Director, senior ministry officials, the leadership of Fauree Link Ghana Limited, and other distinguished guests.

Mr. Opoku noted that for decades, smallholder farmers across Ghana have struggled to access credit from formal financial institutions, often resorting to informal lenders who charge prohibitive interest rates under unfavourable conditions.

“This has limited productivity, constrained expansion, and weakened the resilience of our agricultural sector,” he stated.

Under the MoU, the Ministry will collaborate with Fauree Link to explore the deployment of a Ghana-specific Agritech Agricultural Ecosystem Digital Platform — a unified digital infrastructure designed to integrate farmers, input suppliers, buyers, aggregators, and licensed financial institutions into a single interoperable system.

At the core of the platform will be a dynamic national digital registry of farmers and agricultural value chain actors.

The system will link financing eligibility to verified economic activity such as input purchases, crop sales, and financing transactions, rather than relying solely on traditional collateral requirements.

According to the Minister, the initiative will enable farmers to build credible economic profiles through structured digital transactions, thereby increasing their access to formal credit.

He explained that the platform will also integrate embedded finance directly into agricultural workflows, aligning repayment schedules with harvest and sale cycles to reduce default risks for lenders. Additionally, it will enhance market transparency, improve price discovery, and support structured offtake arrangements.

The Minister emphasised that the initiative aligns with the government’s broader agenda under the Feed Ghana Programme and the national push for digital transformation, financial inclusion, and inclusive economic growth.

He further stressed that the partnership is structured as a public-private engagement in accordance with the Public-Private Partnership Act, 2020, ensuring compliance with statutory safeguards, transparency requirements, and protection of national data sovereignty.

Mr. Opoku disclosed that Fauree Link Ghana Limited has indicated its readiness to assume the capital and operational costs associated with the development and deployment of the platform, without imposing immediate financial obligations on the government, unless otherwise agreed in a future definitive arrangement.

“This demonstrates confidence in Ghana’s agricultural future,” he said.

The Minister underscored the importance of digitalisation in modern agriculture, stating that credible digital infrastructure is critical to improving subsidy targeting, enhancing market efficiency, expanding formal agricultural finance, and driving productivity growth.

“As we append our signatures today, we do so with optimism, but also with responsibility.

The true success of this partnership will be measured not by documents signed, but by farmers financed, yields increased, incomes improved, and livelihoods transformed,” he concluded.

The partnership is expected to contribute significantly to Ghana’s agricultural transformation agenda.