TTB School Facility The proposed project is follow-on investment to provide local currency financing and technical assistance to private K-12 and vocational schools in Ghana.  IFC would provide risk participation of up to GHC22 billion ($2.4 million) to The Trust Bank (TTB, the Bank, or the company) on loans extended to eligible private schools.  These loans will be used to finance construction, purchase of educational materials, and other capital expenditures.  In parallel with the financing facility, a technical assistance program will be provided: 

- to strengthen schools financial, management, and educational capacities;
- to improve the business environment for private education; and 
- to foster the development of an independent provider of educational services to private schools.

Currently, few local banks are lending to private primary, secondary and vocational schools, and those that do, generally lend for less than two years. Thus, even if schools are able to secure bank financing, the tenor of that financing is generally not long enough to support expansion or modernization projects. Such projects thus proceed in a piecemeal fashion, resulting in a great deal of inefficiency and lost potential revenue. Further, expansion by such means cannot keep pace with the huge growth in demand for private schooling. IFCs risk participation would be structured to encourage the Bank to extend maturities to 3-5 years, tenors more appropriate for financing capital investments. 

Despite the impressive growth of private schools in Ghana over the past 15 years, most remain fundamentally weak in their financial and managerial capacities, as well as in their ability to develop more effective educational delivery mechanisms. The majority of schools has minimal financial expertise, weak information systems, if any, and limited opportunities for teacher training and curriculum development. The technical assistance program designed in conjunction with the financing facility is intended to address many of these shortcomings for participating schools, and, in addition, to strengthen the environment for private school operators. The proposed project will have a strong development impact in helping to improve the educational quality and financial and managerial capacity of private K-12 schools in Ghana. In doing so, the project will widen access to much-needed quality education. Illiteracy in Ghana is still close to 40%, and government spending on basic education has not kept up with population growth. According to World Bank estimates, Ghana is unlikely to meet the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary completion by 2015 at current enrolment and spending rates. The poor quality of public education has given rise to enormous demand for private schools. This demand is currently unmet, in large part because schools have little access to affordable, long-term financing, and little training in financial management. This project will address both shortcomings. The projects technical assistance component will also help schools, by building their management capacity, to improve the quality of education provided, thus setting a standard for the private sector, where quality is highly variable and unregulated by the government. Finally, this project supports a successful and replicable model for reaching small education providers - which comprise the vast majority of private providers - throughout Africa (and other regions). Due to the success of this model, IFC continues to expand education financing to other African countries with similar markets and constraints.