The International Finance Corporation, working with a new global financing initiative called the Business Investment Financing Track (BIFT), announced it had provided a $2.4 million convertible loan to a Ghanaian agritech company, Complete Farmer. This funding is coming as a lifeline for the tens of thousands of smallholder farmers who depend on Complete Farmer’s digital platform.
Understanding the Business Investment Financing Track
Before we dive into the details of this deal, it is important to understand what the Business Investment Financing Track, or BIFT, actually is. BIFT is a pilot programme launched on 1 October 2024 by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). GAFSP has been working for over a decade to support smallholder farmers and agribusinesses in low-income countries, and it has mobilised more than 2.5 billion dollars in grants for this purpose. BIFT is the next step in that journey.
Smallholder farmers and early-stage agricultural businesses in Africa have always struggled to get affordable loans from banks. Banks see them as too risky, because farming depends on the weather, because farmers often lack collateral, and because the amounts they need are too small to be profitable for large lenders. BIFT was created to solve this problem by blending grants from donors with money from development banks like the International Finance Corporation and the African Development Bank. This mixture reduces the risk for private investors and makes it possible for money to flow to the farmers who need it most.
The BIFT pilot runs through June 2026, and it works with several major development finance institutions, including the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the International Finance Corporation. The initiative aims to unlock over 200 million dollars in private sector lending for agribusinesses and startups in countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia, as well as Ghana. The deal with Complete Farmer is one of the first major projects under this new track, and it shows exactly how the model is supposed to work.
Who is Complete Farmer?
To understand why this investment matters, you first need to understand what Complete Farmer does. Complete Farmer was founded in 2017 by a Ghanaian entrepreneur named Desmond Koney, and it is headquartered in Accra. The company operates a digital platform that connects farmers with commercial buyers, input suppliers, and logistics providers. In simple terms, it uses technology to solve some of the oldest problems in African farming.
Think about the challenges that a smallholder farmer in northern Ghana faces every planting season. She needs seeds and fertiliser, but she has no cash to buy them. She needs to know who will buy her harvest, but she has no way of finding reliable buyers. She needs to move her crops to market, but she has no transport. And even if she manages to harvest a good crop, she often loses a large portion of it because she has no proper storage. Complete Farmer’s platform addresses all of these problems at once.
The company provides digital farming services and market linkages that make agriculture more efficient, more data-driven, and more accessible. Farmers who join the platform can access quality inputs, receive agronomic advice, and sell their produce directly to commercial buyers. The platform also integrates with financial institutions, which means that farmers can access loans and input financing even if they have no traditional credit history. This is a game-changer for people who have been excluded from the formal financial system their entire lives.
The $2.4 Million Convertible Loan and What It Means
Now let us return to the main news. The $2.4 million provided to Complete Farmer is what is called a convertible loan. This is a type of financing that sits somewhere between debt and equity. It is a loan for now, but under certain conditions, it can later be converted into shares in the company. This structure gives the lender flexibility and gives the company room to grow without the immediate pressure of repayment.
The convertible loan was provided jointly by the International Finance Corporation and BIFT. In addition to the loan, the International Finance Corporation also provided $660,000 in technical assistance and grant funding. This brings the total package to $3.06 million. The grant portion is particularly important because it will be used to strengthen Complete Farmer’s software systems, its operational capacity, and its data infrastructure. In other words, it will help the company build the technological backbone that allows it to serve more farmers more efficiently.
The convertible loan itself will be used to scale up the financing of inputs and agronomy services for farmers. This means that more farmers will be able to get the seeds, fertiliser, and expert advice they need at the start of the planting season, when a lack of cash often prevents them from producing at a commercial scale. This is the core of Complete Farmer’s business model: farmers need money for inputs before they can harvest and sell their crops, and the company needs enough working capital to move those crops through the supply chain.
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The Man Behind Complete Farmer’s Mission
Desmond Koney, the Chief Executive of Complete Farmer, has been vocal about why this investment matters. “Too many farmers with the capacity to grow commercially still struggle to access the financing they need to do so,” he said. “This partnership allows us to scale our input financing model so more farmers have the resources to grow sustainably and participate more meaningfully in agricultural markets”.
Koney’s words carry weight because he understands the problem from the inside. He inherited a pineapple farm from his father, and that experience shaped his vision for what agriculture in Africa could become. He wanted to build a model in which farms in Africa could be more efficient and feed global supply chains. Complete Farmer is the realisation of that vision.
Under Koney’s leadership, Complete Farmer has grown steadily. The company currently operates across eight regions in Ghana and is also active in Togo, with eight fulfilment centres. It supports a network of over 72,000 farmers. With the new investment from the International Finance Corporation and BIFT, the company aims to scale its reach to 240,000 farmers by 2030. That is more than three times its current reach, and it represents a massive expansion of access to digital financial services for smallholder farmers across West Africa.
The Significance of this Deal for Africa
This deal is significant not just for Complete Farmer and its farmers, but for the entire continent. Across Africa, smallholder farmers produce as much as 80 per cent of the continent’s food. Yet they remain among the most under-financed producers in the world. Smallholders face an estimated annual financing shortfall of 170 billion dollars, and although they are among those most exposed to the impacts of climate change, they receive less than one per cent of global climate finance.
This is a paradox that has haunted African agriculture for decades. The people who feed the continent are the ones who can least afford to invest in their own farms. Without access to finance, they cannot buy improved seeds, they cannot afford fertiliser, and they cannot invest in the kind of technology that would make their farms more productive and more resilient to climate shocks.
The BIFT model is designed to break this cycle. By blending concessional finance with private capital, it reduces the risk for lenders and makes it possible to offer loans at below-market rates to farmers and agribusinesses. The first allocation from BIFT went to the African Development Bank to establish the Agro-Inputs Risk Sharing Facility, a 200 million dollar fund that will incentivise local banks to extend credit to agro-input suppliers. This facility is expected to support over 1.5 million farmers and 500 intermediary agro-dealers and cooperatives. The deal with Complete Farmer is another piece of this puzzle, showing how the BIFT model can work with a technology-driven company to reach farmers directly.
A New Way of Thinking About Agric Finance in Africa
The $2.4 million convertible loan and the $660,000 grant are not just numbers on a balance sheet. They represent a new way of thinking about how to finance agriculture in Africa. They represent a recognition that smallholder farmers are not a bad investment, but a good one, if only they are given the right kind of support.
For Complete Farmer, the road ahead is clear. The company plans to use the new capital to expand its platform, to reach more farmers, and to deepen its impact across West Africa. The International Finance Corporation, for its part, has signalled that this is part of a broader strategy to expand agricultural finance in Ghana. The same announcement that included the Complete Farmer deal also included a $200 million facility with Absa Bank Ghana to support cocoa buying companies, which will sustain market access for more than 139,000 smallholder farmers.
Nathalie Kouassi Akon, the International Finance Corporation’s Division Director for West Africa Gulf of Guinea, noted that these partnerships target different gaps in the agricultural value chain, from financing cocoa purchases to helping farmers access inputs and markets. She framed them as part of the World Bank Group’s wider AgriConnect agriculture agenda in Ghana. This suggests that the international community is beginning to understand that supporting agriculture in Africa is not charity. It is investment. It is the smartest investment we can make in the continent’s future.
A Message of Hope for African Farmers
For the smallholder farmer in northern Ghana, the news of this $2.4 million loan may not make headlines on her local radio station. But its effects will reach her fields. It will mean that when the next planting season comes, she will have access to the seeds and fertiliser she needs. It will mean that she can get advice from agronomists who understand her crops and her soil. It will mean that when she harvests, she will have a buyer waiting for her produce, and she will be paid a fair price.
This is what development finance looks like when it works. It is not about grand speeches or endless conferences. It is about a farmer getting the resources she needs to do her job. It is about a Ghanaian company with a bold vision getting the backing it needs to grow. And it is about a new generation of African entrepreneurs and innovators who are proving that agriculture is not a poor man’s business. It is a business of the future.
The Business Investment Financing Track was launched less than two years ago, but it is already showing that a different approach is possible. By combining the resources of development banks, donor governments, and private investors, it is creating a new pathway for capital to flow to the farmers and agribusinesses across Ghana and the broader African continent.
