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In Ghana there is currently just one sharia-compliant financial institution – Ghana Islamic Microfinance, which began as an NGO – though there is significant scope for growth. Part of this is due to the country’s demographic make-up. Although Muslims are far from the only potential client base for IFS, as evidenced by the rollout of Islamic financing instruments in countries like the UK and Japan, sharia-compliant products could prove attractive for the roughly 17.6% of Ghana’s population that identifies as Muslim, according to the 2010 census.

Ghana is a country of roughly 30 million people. It is a young and fast-growing country, with a relatively high population growth rate of 2.2 percent. More than half the population (57 percent) is under 25 years old. The country’s capital, Accra, is a bustling metropolitan area that is home to roughly 2 million people. Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region north of Accra, is another large population center and an active commercial center with roughly the same population as Accra.

FarmDrive is a Kenyan ¬based social enterprise that is unlocking access to financial services for over 50 million smallholder farmers in Africa. Using simple mobile phone technology, alternative data sets, and sophisticated data analytics, FarmDrive is closing the critical information gap that keeps smallholder farmers from getting loans that would allow them to grow and diversify their businesses. Potentially creditworthy smallholder farmers are often denied loans because they lack the traditional credit profiles that lenders rely on to evaluate borrowers.FarmDrive bridges the funding gap between smallholder farmers and financial institutions in two ways. The first step is to bring together multiple streams of data to create yield-predictive agronomic algorithms specific to each farming vertical and geographical region. T hese streams of data can be classified into three categories: 1. Agronomic Data: crop portfolio, soil health, drainage, weeds, pests, etc. 2. Remote Sensing Data: vegetation, weather conditions, climate trends, etc. 3. Market Data: offtake security, price trends, etc. FarmDrive then creates credit profiles for farmers by combining the agronomic algorithm with behavioral data. The behavioral data is obtained from farmers through a simple SMS/Android mobile phone application. With this application, Farmers can track their revenues and expenses, and also send demographic information to FarmDrive.

Unique challenges are mainly regulations for Fintech companies usually being a grey area, without enough clarity on what exactly they might fall under.With lack of enough funds and diversity, fundraising is also another challenge for most of the startups in the MENA region.

Tackling these challenges, the EFSE Fund and the SANAD Fund for MSME, advised by Finance in Motion, have partnered with Village Capital and the LHoFT to develop the Fincluders Bootcamp 2017, unique investment readiness program designed for entrepreneurs offering inclusive financial products.

‘Financial Inclusion’ might be the most noble sector of financial technology, solving problems the traditional finance industry won’t — servicing underbanked demographics in areas with poor financial infrastructure.