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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