I travelled to Ghana in November 2005 on an insight trip organised by a charity called Opportunity International UK. Ghana is a delightful place. Very religious with such facilities as God's Business Centre and the Heavenly Cafe. Even a taxi with the slogan on the back window "In God we rust". Opportunity International provides funds to enable the most disadvantaged "business" people to improve their businesses to the benefit of their families and society in general. "Business" in this context means any small operation designed to make money such as a pile of yams on the ground at the roadside available for sale. The vendor is unable to borrow money to step up to having a table for display or diversifying into plantains as well because he has no collateral. Banks are not interested, money lenders are extortionate and buying the goods on credit is very expensive.

Opportunity International supplies funds for providing loans to such business people. In Ghana they work through Sinapi Aba Savings and Loans Bank. This recently received accreditation from the Bank of Ghana which allowed it to accept deposits (of as little as 50p paying interest at 20%) which it was not permitted to do before. Inflation is something like 14%. We spent quite a lot of our time talking to the people employed by Sinapi Aba in the bank and at their offices. I was impressed by their professionalism.

The loans are supplied through Trust Banks. A group of business people get in touch with Sinapi Aba to say they are interested in becoming members of a Trust Bank. A loan officer calls a group meeting to explain how the system works. Anyone interested then joins for an 8 to 10 week initiation period when they meet weekly to discuss such topics as business plans, keeping records and customer relations. They have to attend these meetings to show commitment and at the last initiation meeting each individual has to decide whether to go ahead. They can only do so if accepted by the other members of the group as they are required to mutually guarantee each other's loans. When all are formally signed up the first cycle of loans can be made, usually about 40 pounds sterling for each. There is an element of interest in the repayment terms set at the rate that banks would charge for lending in general (35%). The group members are given a schedule of repayment dates, starting in 3 weeks time, and continue to meet weekly.

We attended a number of Trust Bank meetings. They start with an enthusiastic session of worship and group commitment, as did each day at the Sinapi Aba banks. There is much singing and chanting led by the loan officer, some prayers and some dancing as well. Then they each make their repayment to the group treasurer who later gives the money to the loan officer to take to the bank. Proper records are kept and anyone not present has their week's repayment made by other group members, to be refunded later it is hoped. We were told that default rates are less than 2%. Any unsatisfactory member of the group can be excluded. We saw people signing up for their loans, many by using their thumbprint, and receiving wads of notes. Then they sat down and counted the money. They may be illiterate but they are able to count. When the loans have been fully repaid, in about 3 months, the next loan cycle starts. This time they can receive up to 50 pounds sterling and so it goes on. They continue to receive training at the meetings such as information on AIDS, women's rights, healthcare and how to advance their businesses. We saw one Trust Bank where they were on their 16th loan cycle and receiving loans of up to 500 pounds.

Most of the clients were market traders and nearly all of them were women. We were told that men often had several wives and no great commitment to the well-being of their families. Women on the other hand wanted to use the extra income they made to improve their business and the family's standard of living, to send their children to school, and to be able to afford healthcare when illness struck. One man we did meet explained that his business was drugs. We wondered about this but of course he meant pharmaceuticals.

The group members were all so enthusiastic and welcoming to us. They were eager to explain how their businesses had been able to grow because of their loans. We visited various clients. There was a market trader who had had a single table selling 2 products. Now she had shelving in display cabinets giving her about 4 times as much space and about 20 different kinds of goods, bought in bulk in a way not possible before. All her 5 children were in school, 2 at secondary level. With her next loan she planned to make her stock secure so that she could leave it overnight rather than taking it home, on her head, each day. Next door to her was a single table selling yams and tomatoes with the trader standing behind it with her 3 children, noticeably not in school.

There were 8 members of our group, one from Opportunity International, and they were all pleasant. We did not have much leisure as our time was fully organised. We had a hired car/minibus and found excessive traffic jams in Accra and Kumasi, the other town we visited. As the vehicle crawled along, a long line of hopeful vendors trooped between the slow moving traffic selling everything from toilet rolls, sachets of water, and trinkets to local chocolate. The only sight seeing trip we had was to a coastal fort, which had originally been a trading station, and which later had been used to house slaves on there way to the Americas. We were conducted round and man's inhumanity to man was abundantly clear. There was a plaque acknowledging the fact that Ghanaians had been much involved in the traffic, having gone up country and captured people before marching them to the coast in chains to be auctioned and transported. 40 million slaves had been involved, I think from the whole of Africa, and only 20% of these had survived to reach their ultimate destination. We saw a black hole into which troublemakers who tried to escape or attacked their captors were thrown. The door was locked and they had no light, no air, no food or water. They were removed when dead and thrown into the sea, so that other slaves, brought up for their rations in shackles, could see their corpses and learn a lesson from them.

We ate at various restaurants including one owned by a former Trust Bank client who had graduated from her market food stall. Now she employed several waitresses and a security guard and demonstrated what could be achieved by a person of determination and enterprise with the help of the funds Opportunity International provides. That was early on in the visit so it was from elsewhere, I think, that I acquired a bug that caused me acute embarrassment on the flight back to Britain. A journey best forgotten but a trip well worth remembering.