Ghanaian industries have topped the list of African enterprises that benefited from the Africa Project Development Facility (APDF) in 1999.

International donors made a total of $28.8 million dollars available to APDF for disbursement to distressed industries in 12 African countries.

Ghanaian enterprises had $10.6 million of the amount followed by South Africa and Nigeria who received $6.7 million and $4.3 million respectively.

APDF was established in 1986 to assist African entrepreneurs and help them to re-organize their production units, prepare feasibility studies, and to secure funds for them. It has offices in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Kenya.

Last year, APDF funded 44 projects in 12 countries of which 14 are located in Ghana. The investment created 475 jobs for Ghanaians mainly in the manufacturing, fishing and tourism industries.

Some of the beneficiary companies are Bosbel Vegetable Oil Mills Ltd, Plaza Hotels, Fay International Limited, Expandable Polystyrene Products Ltd (EPP), Birim Wood Complex, Pharmacare, and Sun Woo Culturing Systems.

This year, APDF will make available about $502.9 million for Ghanaian industries. About $215 of the amount will support industries that want to import capital goods while projections for industrial equipment and agricultural projects are at $82.7 million and 67.9 million respectively. The non-traditional sector, which earned Ghana $404.4 million last year, is also expected to have a funding of some $2.9 million.

APDF is playing a vital role to link cash-starved Small Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to sources of fund through collaboration with Enterprise Support Services for Africa (ESSA). The two bodies have joined forces with other donor-funded programmes to ensure that selected SMEs are given the needed support to become profit oriented.

This year, they are organizing training programmes in strategic planning, marketing, productivity, quality control and supervisory skills for selected SMEs that are on their funding list.

ESSA's client base grew considerably in 1999, with 39 new clients added and 63 individual modules delivered to new and existing clients and projects. The activities of ESSA and personnel have fully integrated into APDF operations in its regional offices. ESSA started a new training programme in East Africa that was initially offered in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The new countries that ESSA is supporting businesses starting from last year are Botswana, Cote d' Ivoire, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

The major objective of ESSA is to lessen the donor-funding requirement, a task for which it scored high marks.

Over 12 bilateral institutions from APDF donor countries provide part of the financing needed by the project. They include Agence Fracaise de Development (AFD) of France, Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) of Britain, German Finance Company for Investment (DEG) of Germany, Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) of Netherlands, and the Canadian executive Services Overseas (CESO) of Canada among others.

An analysis of the projects funded in 1999 shows that of the number of projects that were privatised, rehabilitated or restructured, 32% were manufacturing concerns while 18% were agro-based industries. In West and Central Africa 35% of projects were completed while in East and Southern Africa 65% were completed.

Bosbel Vegetable Oil Mills Ltd. is a success story of APDF funding. The company extracts shea butter and soya oil from nuts at its plant at Tamale. It took a loan f $60,000 for an expansion programme that helped it to acquire six expellers in addition of two operational ones and it will enable the company to increase its shea butter export by 300 percent. Bosbel has started milling soya oil and will soon harvest its first crop of soya.

Datatel Ltd, another Ghanaian company that is being funded is setting up a joint venture company with a leading telecommunications company to address the need for more reliable Internet service. The venture will allow mobile phones to be connected to the Internet for high-speed Internet access.