Part 6
Funding, partners and your pitch
How to explain your business to funders, and where support may be found in Ghana.
A good product is not enough. You must explain your business clearly, briefly and honestly to the people who can help you grow.
A six-part pitch
- The problem, in one sentence: fruits and vegetables are often lost after harvest, costing farmers income.
- Your solution, in one sentence: you buy surplus vegetables that would otherwise rot, dry and grind them, and blend them with psyllium into a shelf-stable mix for a lower-carbohydrate swallow.
- The market, in one sentence, using only facts you can source, plus what you learned from real customers.
- The model in three parts: sourcing, production and distribution.
- The impact: how much produce you intercepted, measured by you.
- The ask: a specific amount for a specific purpose, with your own unit economics behind it.
The platform idea strengthens the pitch. When a funder asks what happens when cabbage is out of season, you can answer: we switch the base, the binder stays, the brand stays and the shelf stays.
Support in Ghana: places to look
No open call was verified
When this module was prepared, none of the programmes below was verified as accepting applications from a new, small food processor. Programmes close, change and are aimed at specific sectors. Use this list as a starting point for your own research, not as a promise of funding.
- GIZ MOVE and MOVE-ComCashew: a programme to strengthen rice and cashew value chains in West Africa, including Ghana, with business support and a matching grant fund for processors. It targets those chains and is scheduled to end in 2027, so a vegetable product may not qualify.
- WFP Ghana post-harvest loss grant: a past call for solutions to losses in pepper, onion and tomato. The call reported in sources has closed. Watch for later rounds.
- AfDB REWARD: a rice value chain project run through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. It funds processing centres, not individual start-ups, and had not launched at the time of the source.
- University of Ghana Business School innovation and incubation hub: support for students who want to turn business ideas into ventures. Check what it currently offers to food entrepreneurs.
- Kosmos Innovation Center with FDA Ghana: a partnership announced in 2025 to offer training and mentorship to food start-ups going through FDA certification. This one is directly relevant to your first steps.
- Ministry of Food and Agriculture: officials have publicly said that the government wants to support agro-processing. No application route for small processors was verified.
Exercise 6.1 · Research support available to you
- Which programmes above, or others you find, are open to your type of business right now?
- What are the deadlines and eligibility rules for each?
- Which documents would you need to prepare?
- Who is the contact person or office at each one?
Exercise 6.2 · Write your one-page pitch
- Use the six parts above and fill in each with your own facts and numbers.
- If you cannot fill a part, treat that as a research task. Do not leave it blank or guess.
Sources for this part:
- KIC, FDA partner to support food innovation start-ups — Ghana News Agency
- From Waste to Value: Unlocking Ghana's Cashew Apple Potential Through Innovation and Partnerships (MOVE-ComCashew) — GIZ
- Empowering Smallholder Farmers Through Post-Harvest Innovations in Ghana (WFP Ghana post-harvest loss grant) — fundsforNGOs
- WFP, Mastercard fund Ghanaian startups fighting food waste — Ghana News Agency
- AfDB provides $18.8m grant to boost Ghana's rice production (REWARD) — Ghana News Agency
- UGBS opens innovation & incubation hub for students — 3News
- Gov't to establish agro-processing drive to boost jobs, food security — MyJoyOnline