AIL offers Finance-led expertise in finding and exploiting growth opportunities for wholesalers, entrepreneurs and SMEs. This is aimed at streamlining their operations and making SMEs and youth/women entrepreneurs more financially sound. AIL provides beneficiaries with financial-based decision-tools to become more credit-worthy and facilitates stronger and formal linkages with Rural and Community Banks for more sustainable access to credit.
Realizing the importance of Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in driving economic most economies in Africa and their contribution to economic growth, AIL adopts the following steps to SME Development.
AIL recognizes the role of marketing in generating cash for sustainable business operations. It therefore adopts a market-first, science-based approach for providing end to end services in the management of enterprises or facilities. AIL undertakes market studies on value chains/firms and secure contracts to manage and understand the nature of the market (opportunities, challenges, size, etc), to ensure optimal utilization of facility/products, thus making the facility profitable.
AIL has supported governments to develop and review National Agricultural Investment Plans for ECOWAS countries to ensure conformity to the four set strategic policy pillars of land and natural resource management, rural infrastructure and market access, food and nutrition security and research for agricultural productivity. It has supported the development of West Africa Regional Agricultural Investment Plan (RAIP) for ECOWAS.
AIL has core competence in building technical and managerial capacities of youth, women, institutions and entrepreneurs in agri-business to become productive and competitive. Over the last four (4) years, AIC has offered such training for the East Africa Community (EAC), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded projects, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-Gambia and final year Agric students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
