____________________________________________________________________________________________ *Corresponding author: Email: harusconer@yahoo.com; British Journal of Economics, Management & Trade 3(4): 372-388, 2013 SCIENCEDOMAIN international www.sciencedomain.org Technological Innovations in Microfinance Institutions in the Three Northern Regions of Ghana Stanley Kojo Dary 1 and Haruna Issahaku 1* 1 Department of Economics and Entrepreneurship Development, Faculty of Integrated Development Studies, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana. Authors’ contributions Both authors contributed tremendously to the study. Author SKD wrote the protocol, supervised data collection, performed data entry, and discussed results on the structure of MFIs, the adoption of technological innovations, and challenges hindering innovativeness. Author HI wrote the introduction, designed the study, performed the statistical analysis, and discussed results on the relationship between adoption of technological innovations and the characteristics of MFIs, wrote the conclusion, and the abstract. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript. Received 20 th May 2013 Accepted 28 th June 2013 Published 17 th July 2013 ABSTRACT Microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the three northern regions of Ghana continue to find ways of meeting the aspirations of the poor. One way they try to achieve this goal is by adopting technological innovations. This paper explored technological innovations in a sample of 41 MFIs drawn from the three northern regions of Ghana. Chi-square test was used to test the relationship between characteristics of MFIs and the adoption of technological innovations. The Spearman’s rho was used for robustness checks. The findings revealed that computer based technology is the most widely adopted technology followed by telephone, counting machine, internet, satellite, fax machine, and ATM in that order. The study found the adoption of these technological innovations to be significantly related to factors such as board size, number of males in board, board tenure, frequency of board meeting, size of workforce, number of employees with tertiary education, investment in R&D, number of branches or outlets, and sources of funding. According to the MFIs, government policy, competition, regulatory and legal environment, infrastructure and firm specific factors such as client exit rate, human resource capacity and Research Article