Development Bank Ghana Limited (DBG) and its partners have launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered platform to help smallholder farmers access timely agronomic information and improve their prospects of securing sustainable agricultural financing.
Known as “Boa Mi”, meaning “help me” in Akan, the platform combines crop-specific farming advice with agricultural portfolio intelligence to support farmers, extension officers and financial institutions.
The initiative, led by DBG, Opportunity International (OI) and the Ghana Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL), was launched at the DBG ICT Sector Financing Roundtable in Accra.
A statement issued to the media said the platform, initially developed under the working name “Farmer AI”, had been piloted among rice farmers, generating more than 8,500 advisory queries within three months and recording a user satisfaction rate of 75 percent.
The platform currently operates in English, with versions in Twi, Dagbani, Ewe and Ga under development.
It supports both text and voice interactions through WhatsApp and is currently available at no additional cost to users, allowing farmers to seek information using basic mobile devices.
The partners said the platform would subsequently be extended to six other agricultural commodities, while more participating financial institutions would be brought onto the system.
The information powering Boa Mi is Ghana-specific and commodity-specific, with GIRSAL’s agribusiness specialists validating the content to ensure that the advice reflects local farming conditions.
Professor Randolph Nsor-Ambala, Chief Executive Officer of DBG, said the platform had been tested with real farmers and was now ready for wider deployment.
He said the platform responded to the long-standing challenges faced by farmers in accessing timely technical support.
“Ghana’s agricultural sector has been sending one clear message for a very long time; ‘help me’. ‘Boa Mi’ is Ghana’s answer,” he said.
Mr Samuel Yeboah, Chief Operating Officer of GIRSAL, said Boa Mi provided agronomic guidance based on specific crops, seasons, soil conditions and locations.
He said GIRSAL would continue to provide validated technical information to farmers while supporting efforts to reduce credit risks for financial institutions.
The platform, he said, would improve farmers’ decision-making, raise productivity, strengthen loan performance and ultimately support greater access to sustainable agricultural finance.
Mr Timothy Strong, Head of Agriculture Finance at Opportunity International, said smallholder farmers would be central to meeting future global food demand.
He said farmers in Ghana were currently producing only about 20 to 30 per cent of their potential yields, partly because they lacked timely access to relevant agronomic information.
Mr Strong said Boa Mi would place region-specific and validated farming knowledge directly in the hands of farmers, helping to close an information gap that had constrained agricultural lending.
He said financial institutions also faced challenges obtaining timely information on crop performance and agricultural loan portfolios.
“Boa Mi is designed for Ghana, helping farmers here grow more, earn more, and reach their full potential,” he said.
Because the platform works through WhatsApp, it is compatible with any WhatsApp-enabled mobile handset, including basic smartphones commonly used by smallholder farmers.
DBG is Ghana’s wholesale development finance institution, providing long-term concessional financing to 21 participating financial institutions for on-lending to Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and small corporates in productive sectors.
The sectors include agribusiness, manufacturing, ICT and high-value services such as education, tourism and healthcare.
Since 2022, DBG has disbursed more than GH¢2.5 billion to 942 enterprises, supporting an estimated 41,000 jobs.
Opportunity International is a global non-profit organisation that supports entrepreneurs, businesses, farmers and families through financial services, training and other programmes aimed at addressing generational poverty.
GIRSAL is a non-banking financial institution established to de-risk agricultural financing and encourage financial institutions to increase lending to Ghana’s agricultural sector.
