Growth Investment Partners (GIP), the small and medium enterprise (SME) financing platform seeded by British International Investment (BII), has raised a fresh $20 million from Norfund and Axis Pension Trust, bringing its total capital base to approximately $70 million and setting the stage for a significant expansion of its lending activity across Ghana.
The fresh capital comprises $15 million from Norfund, the Norwegian development finance institution, and $5 million from Axis Pension Trust, a domestic pension fund manager, and will be deployed to provide long-term, local currency financing to Ghanaian businesses that are typically too large for microfinance but too small to access conventional bank credit.
The inclusion of Axis Pension Trust carries particular significance for Ghana’s private investment landscape. It signals that domestic institutional capital, which has historically stayed on the sidelines of private equity, is beginning to engage more directly with the country’s productive sector. The Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Victor Azuma Mejida, noted at the investment event that pension assets in Ghana have grown to around 100 billion cedis, making them well-suited for the kind of long-term investments that GIP represents.
Axis Pension Trust Chief Operations Officer Matthew Mani framed the decision as both a developmental obligation and a learning opportunity, adding that co-investing with international institutions gives domestic investors exposure to governance practices and deal processes that are still relatively new in Ghana’s market.
GIP was launched in 2023 and has since built a portfolio of 16 companies, deploying over $40 million and directly supporting more than 3,356 jobs, including 533 newly created roles across manufacturing, agriculture, financial services, and healthcare.
The platform targets businesses with annual turnover between $500,000 and $15 million or workforces of 10 to 300 employees. Its financing is structured in local currency, which GIP and its backers say removes foreign exchange risk for recipient businesses and allows repayment schedules to be tailored to actual cash flows rather than rigid commercial banking terms.
Board Chairman Albert Essien said Ghana’s challenge has not been a lack of investable SMEs, but rather capital structures that do not match the growth timelines of those businesses, arguing that long-term, flexible funding combined with post-investment technical support was the model needed to turn promising enterprises into sustainable companies.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Ghana licensed GIP in 2023 as a self-managed private equity fund. The platform plans to invest in at least 10 additional companies during 2026 and has set a longer-term target of supporting more than 300 businesses over 15 years through an open-ended structure that allows capital to be recycled and redeployed.
About 84 percent of GIP’s existing portfolio companies are black-owned or led businesses, with a comparable proportion meeting the platform’s gender inclusion criteria.
