Ayekoo! Millennium Villages & Opportunity Expand Microfinance in Rural Ghana

Congratulations (Ayekoo) to the clients of Opportunity Ghana. A Millennium Villages Project (MVP) satellite branch has now opened in the small rural community of Datano.

The Datano satellite branch is a small outlet located in Ghana’s western region, in the Amansie West District of Ashanti, west of Accra. The branch is staffed by three employees including one loan officer. Although the branch only recently opened its doors to families, Opportunity Ghana‘s staff have been working with groups of farmers in the region for some weeks now.

The Millennium Villages Project is an initiative designed to enable rural Africans to eradicate extreme poverty and achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. MVP personnel and partners work with villages to create and facilitate sustainable, community-led action plans that are tailored to the villages‘ specific needs. The Millennium Villages Project is based on the findings of the UN Millennium Project and is led by the science, policy and planning teams at the Earth Institute, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Programme.  

Ghanaian clients at the new satellite bank branch in rural Datano

Already at Opportunity Ghana, MVP branch staff have assisted 88 clients with Trust Group loans and training, and 130 families with savings accounts–a first for most of the clients in this community. The branch has a lending portfolio of $22,043 and a savings book valued at $23,557.

MVP branch staff will also serve families in several communities clustered around Datano, where the main economic activity is smallholder farming. Opportunity Ghana is helping farmers achieve higher productivity and protecting them from loss through the implementation of Opportunity’s agriculture finance strategy, which will allow families to build a sustainable framework that increases food security and sparks economic activity for the entire community.

This rural expansion in Ghana is empowering more people living in geographically remote regions to provide for their families and their futures with microfinance solutions. We can’t wait to see how the clients of Opportunity Ghana partnering with MVP continue to work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and work their way out of poverty.