Business Plan Competitions
TechnoServe is helping aspiring entrepreneurs to turn business ideas into viable business plans through Believe Begin Become, a national business plan competition. Thanks to training and networking (as well as seed capital for the winners), the competition's participants will be better-equipped to create thriving small and medium companies that generate jobs and incomes across many sectors of the economy.
Key supporters: Google.org and other private, academic and governmental organizations

Building Businesses and Industries

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Cashew
TechnoServe helped launch Ghana's cashew industry, starting with introducing better seeds, developing appropriate processing models and facilitating market links. It is now building on this by training farmers to improve their productivity and by establishing quality standards to facilitate trading. We are also an implementing partner in a project led by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) to improve the lives of 150,000 small-scale cashew farmers in West and Southern Africa. The project aims to improve the quality of raw cashew nut cultivation, increase farmer productivity, improve links between small-scale farmers and the marketplace, increase African processing capacity, and promote a sustainable global market for African cashews.
Key supporter: U.S. Agency for International Development and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Cocoa
Ghana is the world's top producer of quality cocoa, which is grown by an estimated 700,000 farmers. TechnoServe is training cocoa farmer groups to operate as businesses and optimize their productivity so that the farmers can triple their incomes.
Key supporter: Wienco

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Horticulture
Thanks to Ghana's promotion of non-traditional farm exports, the country's horticulture sector has been rapidly expanding. TechnoServe is helping entrepreneurs to capitalize on these opportunities, focusing on building businesses selling high-value exports such as pineapple, papaya and mango. They are learning to improve their operations and manage their businesses more competitively, thus increasing incomes and creating jobs. We have worked with industry stakeholders to build an efficient processing chain and developed Ghana's reputation for consistent and high-quality exports. We also help farmer associations to produce and market citrus, onion, tomato and other crops for a growing urban market.
Key supporter: U.S. Agency for International Development

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Other
TechnoServe is helping farmers in some of Ghana's more marginalized northern areas to pursue better income-generating opportunities while ensuring an adequate food supply for the area. Thousands of farmers are receiving training to better grow and sell crops such as groundnuts (peanuts), onions and maize, and links to sources of credit and markets are also being facilitated. We are also helping hundreds of sorghum farmers produce on a commercial basis to supply Guinness. And we are helping several rice businesses to boost productivity, introduce value-added processing to meet local market demands and reduce the country's dependence on rice imports.
Key supporters: U.S. Agency for International Development, the Common Fund for Commodities and the French Embassy

Other
TechnoServe is helping some salt-processing businesses to increase their volumes of iodized salt, linking them to womens' groups in Ghana's poorest regions and training the women in marketing and distribution. This will create jobs while helping Ghana move toward its goal of universal iodization of salt.
Key supporter: World Food Program

Improving the Business Environment

Leadership Development
Promising young Ghanaian leaders attend the Africa Leadership Initiative seminar series, run by TechnoServe and the Aspen Institute. It is designed to encourage them to address Africa's biggest challenges.
Key supporters: The Databank Foundation