Financing African Futures: Rethinking Access to Capital for SMEs

By Divine Adongo | Voices of Africa

In the town of Buea, Cameroon, a young entrepreneur named Tande has built a promising eco-toiletry startup. Demand is growing, her customer base is expanding, and she’s ready to scale. But the banks don’t see her vision — they only see risk. Her credit history is thin. Her collateral is nonexistent. Her cash flow is irregular. She walks out of her third loan rejection frustrated, asking herself the question many African entrepreneurs ask too often: Where does one go to find capital in Africa when you have no connections and no property to offer?

Access to finance remains one of the most stubborn bottlenecks in Africa’s development story. While the continent overflows with ideas, innovation, and ambition, it suffers from a chronic mismatch between where the money is and where the potential is. Traditional financial systems are often rigid, risk-averse, and ill-suited to the realities of small businesses, especially those led by women, youth, and informal traders. The result? Dreams delayed. Growth stunted. Potential wasted.

According to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the financing gap for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in sub-Saharan Africa exceeds $330 billion. This is not just a market failure — it’s a developmental emergency. Because without capital, businesses cannot grow. And without growing businesses, there can be no industrialization, no jobs, no trade, and no transformation.

This is where the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) becomes both a promise and a test. By opening up new markets and removing trade barriers, AfCFTA can unlock unprecedented opportunities for African entrepreneurs. But if we do not rethink how these entrepreneurs access finance, AfCFTA risks becoming a highway where only the well-funded can drive.

That’s why the AfCFTA Academy doesn’t only teach trade procedures and protocols — it also tackles the financial literacy and inclusion gaps that block small businesses from benefiting fully. Through targeted workshops, partnerships with financial institutions, and business development training, the Academy helps MSMEs become investment-ready, understand lending ecosystems, and explore non-traditional financing like crowdfunding, cooperative capital, digital wallets, and diaspora bonds.

Because finance must be reimagined, not just increased. We must design financial products that work for the way African entrepreneurs operate — flexible repayment models, zero-collateral loan schemes, rotational savings clubs, and invoice financing for traders. Mobile-based microcredit and peer-to-peer lending can play a bigger role. Governments and AfCFTA-supporting institutions must create guarantee funds and credit insurance schemes to de-risk lending to small businesses.

Furthermore, policies must empower local capital pools — from pension funds to sovereign wealth — to invest in local businesses, not just infrastructure or foreign markets. Venture capital ecosystems must diversify beyond fintech and begin funding agriculture, manufacturing, green innovation, and creative industries. Women-led businesses, often underfunded despite high repayment rates, must be prioritized.

Tande’s story is not isolated. Across the continent, young people, rural women, and urban hustlers have ideas that could scale nationally or continentally — if only they had capital. The AfCFTA Academy sees these entrepreneurs not as liabilities, but as key players in Africa’s economic integration story. By linking them to trade finance platforms, export credit agencies, and investor networks, the Academy turns opportunity into access.

Because Africa cannot trade what it doesn’t fund. And it cannot fund growth if it keeps locking its entrepreneurs out of the money rooms.

The next generation of African industrialists is already here — they just need the fuel to move. If we’re serious about building a self-sustaining, integrated Africa, then financing small businesses is not charity — it is strategy.