Are Ghanaians Entrepreneurial?

Four business minded people and two students of law were having dinner at the Accra Imperial Peking Chinese Restaurant when this topic of discussion came up. The claim was made that Ghanaians were not entrepreneurial which is to say, we are risk averse, are unwilling/unable to get others to take risks to our benefit and/or are unwilling to move out of our comfort zones. An example was offered of the cobbler who after twenty something years still spoke of his dream of expanding into a shop but remained sat at his small table by the roadside, the only change being his graying hair.

I’m sure you know of many other instances of people setting up one room shops and grinding it out the rest of their lives or of those satisfied with being the wealthiest people in a village and no more. And then there are our students who study and pray that one day they might get a chair and table in a civil service office or a bank and obtain security for their families.

I vehemently argued that we were indeed entrepreneurial. The problem was the lack of credit from banks, the killer interest rates on loans, a society which is quick to punish failure, a government unwilling to foster the right environment for entrepreneurship and business, and a culture of filial duty which forces the individual to settle in the most secure jobs like medicine, law, engineering and the like—to wit, everything outside of the individual.

When saner minds prevail, however, true as these arguments may be, and there are current indications that some of them are increasingly false (With some mild improvement over the past years, it now takes on average seven procedures, twelve days and a cost of 20% income per capita to start a business. Our ease of doing business and starting a business still lag those of many countries with ranks of 67 and 99 however – World Bank), the Cedi stops with us. The many small businesses indeed show we are willing to take risks but the few Ghanaian owned large business and the burgeoning ranks of the unemployed college grads suggest we are unwilling to dream big or act on big dreams.

This is where we need to change and grudgingly I admit the truth of my friends’ arguments. Only recently have we begun to build an entrepreneurial culture/an enabling environment with numerous award schemes for entrepreneurs. These do not go far enough. I dream of the day when it is okay to start a business and lose money, where past business failures do not mean lack of access to future credit and are not negatives on resumes/CVs. We must teach entrepreneurship in our institutions as a viable career option. Malaysia is already reinventing itself with efforts to incorporate it into its formal curriculum. We can learn something there.

As usual, our generation is setting the pace. From IT/Software companies to education-related enterprises, there are people out there holding true to the Harvard Business Schools’ The Entrepreneurial Manager course definition of entrepreneurship as “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled”. So get out there, start a business, innovate in another person’s business, hedge your risks if you must, do it after work if you must, use someone else’s money if you must, but for Ghana’s sake, do something.

An interesting research on entrepreneurship in Ghana can be found here.

Prime

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This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
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Mu’ammar’s War…Cote D’Ivoire and The illegitimacy of the African Union

Unless you have been living in a hole for the past few weeks, you know there is a war going on in Libya, many anti-establishment protests across North Africa and the Middle East, and Cote D’Ivoire has had two “presidents” since its elections in November, 2010. La Cote D’Ivoire is in another civil war with hundreds certainly dead. The only question is at whose hands. You have also read the news articles and the commentary from all sides and obviously have an opinion on whether the US should be in Libya and France in La Cote D’Ivoire. So let’s dig through the emotions and have a human discussion.

Why are we in the current situation? I fear it is because the African Union no longer represents the ideals of the African people. Here was an organization, its predecessor Organization of African Unity anyway, formed by revolutionary thinkers of their time to give Africa a voice and counter its perceived looting by the West and Soviet Union alike. Those were the days of promise. Sadly, many of those leaders drank the palm wine of their glory. They came to believe that they and only they were the repositories of all solutions and visions to move their people forward. That and…leadership came with tremendous wealth.

So they became oppressive dictators and neo-democrats who held elections with only one outcome—a guaranteed victory. And with these relics of the past still on and presiding over the AU (Qaddafi was its past president), it lost its legitimacy. What could one expect of it? Laurent Gbagbo threw the gauntlet down when he asked what any of the leaders knew about democracy to seek to mediate it in his country. Indeed they knew naught; which explains the union’s lack of action or inability to resolve to any just end the various disputed elections or holds on power in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Togo.
The problem with dictatorships is when things go right, some level of tolerance is garnered but when economic conditions deteriorate, instability arises. The response of leaders to this instability ends up determining their fates. In Africa, the usual response is to stoke ethnic and anti-imperialist sentiments, kill a lot of people, and stay in power. Mobutu did it, Amin did it, Mugabe is doing it. And usually, each AU leader fetches water to set by his beard as he watches another’s burn.

The AU was ineffective in La Cote D’Ivoire, unheard in Egypt and Tunisia and silent in Libya until the specter of UN intervention was raised. With no organization to look out for the interests of “we the people” then, what gives? The international community, that’s what. Yes there have been many protests toppling regimes before this—La Cote D’Ivoire did it with General Guei, Indonesians went against Suharto, and a lot of the monks in Myanmar were abused and in all, the international society stood and watched.

Currently, Bahrain is oppressing protestors, Yemen did the same, both Cote D’Ivoire and Syria has shot into protestors. The less said of Iran, the better. Maybe it’s because the former two are allies of the west and the latter two too big or too cozily aligned to the east to be bombed. Maybe Cote d’Ivoire only holds interest for the French and maybe Qaddafi’s day was always coming with Lockerbie still in people’s memories and him sitting pretty on all that oil.

Maybe it’s more complicated than that but what is certain is the US-led, France-inspired, UN endorsed onslaught shows the international community is suddenly acting. And so is the illegitimate AU, apparently—condemning the use of force in Libya on the one hand while asking for it in Cote D’Ivoire on the other. The AU, full of its dinosaurs, is not my voice. It is not the voice of the African people. So here is my voice (which is not the voice of the African people).

I do not support arbitrary interventions in the sovereignty of other nations. But I also do not support the killing of a nation’s people by its government. We will see in due time how Libya turns out especially with Mu’ammar seemingly unflappable. But I will not sit here and wax lyrical about some idea of sovereignty. I will not condemn action taken to protect innocent lives. I certainly hope someone takes action if my people are ever under siege. Whether force should be used is a legitimate question but the litmus test for me is whether action or non-action leads to the protection of more lives.

If Qadaffi goes, another dictator may yet rise in his place. A western puppet may be installed but the Libyan people could yet be alive to decide how to react to that. If it be for Libya’s oil, then so be it. It might be the first time oil is a blessing instead of a curse. After all, as the saying goes in Eʋe, “agbenɔxevi metsia fumato o” (As long as a bird lives, it will certainly grow feathers).

Prime

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This is the way I choose, the destiny I pursue
To help the unfit and the fit
To treat each according to his need
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