African SMEs have no shortage of reasons to ask for money. Investors have one reason to say yes: a business they can understand and believe will return it.
That gap underscored several conversations at the Loveworld Trade & Investment Forum (LTIF) in Accra, Ghana, in October, where founders, investors, and trade experts kept returning to a familiar African problem. Capital may be scarce, but businesses also have to become easier to finance.
Ghana’s private-sector credit rose 35.5% year-on-year to GH¢123.3 billion ($10.6 billion) in August, according to the Bank of Ghana (BoG), as lending conditions improved. More money is moving into businesses. The question is which businesses are positioned to attract it.
Speaking at LTIF 2026, Adetola Onayemi, co-founder and chief executive officer of Norebase, argued that entrepreneurs often begin the capital conversation in the wrong place.
Adetola Onayemi, co-founder and chief executive officer of Norebase. Image Source: LTIF
Onayemi is a lawyer and trade policy specialist who previously served as an Assistant Chief Negotiator at the Nigerian Office for Trade Negotiations (NOTN) and participated in the negotiations that produced the African Continental Free Trade Area. Norebase helps companies establish and operate across African markets.
“Capital is cheap. It exists in specific places,” he told delegates.
Finding it requires learning “the language that capital understands”, Onayemi said. A founder has to convert a need into an investable proposition: “This is the business model, this is how it is going to work. Give me X capital, and I’m going to go do that business.”
Investors made much the same point from the other side of the table.
During LTIF’s “Trust Equation” session, Dr Olori Boye-Ajayi, Managing Partner at Borderless Trade & Investment, and Fiyin Ogunlesi, founder and Managing Partner of RegalStone Capital, challenged the idea that money is always the first problem facing an SME.
Their focus was positioning: whether an investor can see the business clearly enough to price its risk. Businesses need current financial information, measurable performance and operations that do not require an investor to guess what is happening inside them. The panel’s blunt prescription was to make the business “simple, boring, and predictable”.
However, visibility is only part of the bargain.
Highly Esteemed Pastor Chidi Ezimako, Executive Minister of Hinterlands at Loveworld Kingdom, brought the conversation back to execution. A growing market is not proof of a scalable company. Neither is a charismatic founder. Capital wants evidence that demand exists, margins hold, records are reliable, and the business can grow without losing control of quality or cash.
African SMEs still need more capital. But money follows a proposition before it follows a plea. The founders who understand that are already speaking the investor’s language.
