African Gate Financial Support was launched early 2009 after investments by a UK based ethical investment company. The company was previously known with a different name (African Gate Support Ghana) and was registered as a charity. The change to a commercially focused company was done to ensure that we could continue to attract investments and be able to meet the ever increasing loan demand in Takoradi. We are still highly dedicated to supporting the local community and to bring about social benefits where we operate, but we are also dedicated to a good return on invested capital and become Ghana's most efficient micro credit organisation.

To meet this aim we have over the last year undergone a efficiency improvement program, which started by the introduction of an electronic micro credit system, electronic bookkeeping and the introduction of Internet in our offices. We are continuing this program throughout 2009 and we are now about to start a program to re-engineer our loan processes, enhance our risk measures and currency hedging.

To meet our ethical goals we are continuing our training programs for our group loans and we will investigate launching training programs for our individual customers too. We will continue to benchmark our interest rates against the market to ensure we do not overcharge our customers.