Development Bank Ghana (DBG) and its partners have launched a new Artificial Intelligence-powered agricultural finance advisory platform to improve access to timely agronomic advice and sustainable financing for smallholder farmers. Known as “Boa Mi”, meaning “help me” in Akan, the platform is built into WhatsApp and is live now.
It is a simple, accessible tool that allows farmers and agricultural extension officers to get agronomic guidance via text and voice messages, while giving loan officers real-time agricultural portfolio intelligence.
The initiative was launched at the DBG ICT Sector Financing Roundtable in Accra. It is led by DBG, Opportunity International, including Opportunity International Savings and Loans Ltd (OISL Ghana), and the Ghana Incentive-Based Risk-Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL).
According to DBG, Boa Mi was developed under the working name “Farmer AI” after 18 months of work examining how technology can be converted from an innovation concept into a tool capable of addressing practical economic constraints in agriculture.
DBG Deputy CEO for Investments, Micheal Mensah- Baah said the launch is for smallholders in Ghana to make their businesses easier when it comes to transaction.
“Agriculture remains at the heart of the Ghanaian economy, and more importantly, at the heart of the livelihoods of millions of Ghanaians. But for many smallholder farmers in Ghana, one of the biggest challenges is not the willingness to farm. It is access to the right information at the right time in a form that is practical and easy to use”.
Mensah-Baah
The App is Designed for WhatsApp
He said, this is not another app many agritech solutions that require farmers to download a separate application, Boa Mi is being designed around WhatsApp rather than requiring farmers to learn an unfamiliar digital interface.
That design choice, DBG says, is critical for adoption because it meets farmers where they already are. The platform supports both text and voice interactions and currently comes at no additional cost to users, enabling farmers to ask questions and receive guidance in the format most convenient to them.
It currently operates in English, with local language versions, including Twi, Dagbani, Ewe and Ga, under development. The content powering the platform is Ghana specific and commodity specific, and has been validated by GIRSAL’s agribusiness specialists to ensure its relevance to local farming conditions.
This addresses one of the persistent barriers to agricultural finance: the lack of timely and reliable information connecting farmers, agricultural advisers and lenders.
Rice Farmers Used as Pilots for the Launch
Before its official launch, the platform was piloted among rice farmers, generating more than 8,500 advisory queries in three months and recording a user satisfaction rate of 75 per cent.
Professor Randolph Nsor-Ambala, Chief Executive Officer of DBG, said the platform had been tested by real farmers and ‘’was ready to scale”. “Ghana’s agricultural sector has been sending one clear message for a very long time; ‘help me’. ‘Boa Mi’ is Ghana’s answer.’’
The launch comes at a time when financial institutions in Ghana remain averse to financing agriculture due to perceived high risks and insufficient information. GIRSAL was established by the Bank of Ghana as a holistic and integrated system of instruments to de-risk the agricultural sector and incentivize banks to lend to the sector.
Since its inception, it has guaranteed agricultural loans valued at over GH¢629.6 million and developed a web-based Agriculture and Agribusiness Lending Knowledge Portal covering 33 agricultural commodities to assist banks in loan assessment.
Boa Mi Built to Support Bank Staff
While GIRSAL’s Knowledge Portal was built for bank staff with over 700 staff from 39 institutions registered and over 6,000 visits recorded Boa Mi extends that intelligence directly to the farm gate and to extension officers.
Officials say the platform will be extended to six other agricultural commodities and its network of participating financial institutions expanded. OISL Ghana, a key partner in the rollout, is expected to be among the first lenders to integrate Boa Mi insights into its smallholder lending decisions, helping to reduce loan rejection rates and processing time.
For Opportunity International, which has a long presence in rural finance in Ghana, the platform aligns with its mission to de-risk smallholder lending through better data and advisory support, rather than just credit.
DBG says the broader goal is not simply to digitise agriculture, but to tackle information asymmetry that makes the sector difficult to finance. By giving farmers evidence-based agronomic guidance and giving loan officers real time portfolio intelligence through a single WhatsApp channel, Boa Mi is intended to improve yields, improve repayment, and unlock more capital for agriculture.
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