A leading climate finance authority has urged Ghanaian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to restructure their business models around climate resilience, warning that billions in available green funding are passing the country by due to poor awareness and inadequate preparation.
Professor Albert Ahenkan, Head of the Department of Public Administration and Health at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), told the Business and Financial Times that Ghana already has a dedicated climate fund reportedly worth US$100 million, yet local businesses remain largely unable to access it.
He said the barrier is not the absence of funds but the absence of bankable projects. “The monies are not just for sharing. We need to present bankable proposals,” Prof. Ahenkan said, stressing that climate finance institutions require measurable evidence of climate impact before releasing capital.
Prof. Ahenkan has previously developed climate finance training modules for SMEs and conducted comprehensive assessments of Ghana’s green business sector, and has led the development of the National Designated Authority Operational Manual for the Green Climate Fund for the Ministry of Finance. He brings that institutional knowledge directly to bear on the current gap.
The professor argued that SMEs willing to incorporate climate change mitigation and adaptation practices into their operations would unlock access to concessional funds and grants from multilateral institutions at far lower rates than traditional bank lending, which he described as prohibitively expensive due to high interest rates and heavy collateral requirements.
He called on the Ministry of Finance, as custodian of the climate fund, to intensify outreach to the private sector, warning that policy incentives sitting at the national and sub-national levels remain invisible to the very businesses they are designed to support.
Prof. Ahenkan also called for deliberate training programmes to build technical capacity among entrepreneurs, and urged stronger collaboration between government, academia, and the private sector to translate climate research into actionable enterprise support.
