How It Works

Lumana strengthens communities in rural Africa by empowering underserved populations with the tools for successful entrepreneurship. Lumana got its start mobilizing latent talent in rural communities by employing existing leaders in a micro-enterprise mentor program. Through this program, community members are organized into cooperative groups, paired with a business coach who has experience in their industry, provided entrepreneurship training and savings planning services, and given small loans in rotating cycles. After only a year, Lumana has developed a successful model for community-based microfinance and is currently building out an incubator for locally-identified, investment-ready social businesses.

Beyond Microcredit

After working on the ground in our first villages in South Eastern Ghana we have realized the need to augment our offerings by developing new programs and financial products to better serve our cooperatives. Over the coming months, the Lumana team will work with our partners to develop the following programs.

Lumana Connect is an effort to use our constantly evolving metrics for development to identify specific needs in our communities and to find relevant development agencies in Ghana to help fill these needs. We also use our data collection strategy and tools as a way to help other communities to identify needs and to introduce Lumana's financial products and business education classes.

Lumana Ventures is a program being developed to perform multiple services aimed at activating latent potential within our communities in rural Ghana. Lumana Ventures will do this by providing consulting services for Ghanian and outside of country businesses interested in not only profit but also the creation of a social return in our communities. Lumana Ventures seeks to do this by creating a well supported incubation environment for start-up Ghanaian businesses in all of our localities. Priority will be granted to local "economic engines" of a village that can be invested in, advised, and scaled up to keep profits close and bolster job creation.