Concepts and Tools
The IB/IGB Landscape Study
Ghana has hundreds of thousands of enterprises. Only a few hundred are likely to qualify as IB/IGB, and those few reach millions of people.
To qualify as IB/IGB, an initiative avoids self-claiming and impact washing, and uses concrete result-based criteria for reach and BoP targeting, income increase, and innovation.
The country has about 700,000 enterprises. Most of them, about 75 percent, are micro-enterprises. They do not qualify as IB/IGB, because the systemic change and the commercial viability are too limited. Of the remainder, an estimated 120,000 (17 percent) are small companies, with revenue of GHS 1 to 7 million. About 24,000 (3.4 percent) are medium-sized, with revenue of GHS 7 to 30 million. About 4,000 (0.6 percent) are large. Perhaps only 300 to 500 enterprises, about 0.3 percent, would qualify as IB/IGB: firms that deliberately create a systemic change for the BoP, the bottom 40 percent, as defined for this program.
From a BoP point of view, these few companies directly benefit millions of people in Ghana and contribute strongly to income, social and environmental poverty reduction. The number of companies matters less than the social impact — how many people are reached, and how deep the change is — and the economic growth, in revenue, that those firms create.
The first picture of that group is the 27 business lines accredited so far. With more awareness, many more companies would make the transition. The ten features of the strategic program are how the initiative intends to make that possible.