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22.08.2014 Feature Article

THE HOMEGROWN SOLUTION AGENDA: PART 2 - By Marricke Kofi Gane

THE HOMEGROWN SOLUTION AGENDA: PART 2 - By Marricke Kofi Gane
22.08.2014 LISTEN

Dear Mr. & Mrs Ministers,

Having been involved in Public Finances for a while now, one of the things I know very well, like the back of my hand is this – if you, as a government have been able to conjure GhC20 million from the Nframa (air) to support Ebola, you can easily cough up 4 times that and still not break a sweat.

All I am saying, my dear sirs and madam, is, if you can cough out GhC80 million (i.e. US$20,000,000) right now and consider this idea below, you could spark one of the wildest revolutions in Africa that even you yourselves may not have dreamed of.

(1)**Assign credible scouts, to look for 2 new technologies or know-hows, the output of which that have more than an 80% balanced probability of high demands in Africa's over the next 10-20 years and buy those technologies/knowhow or sign off transfer agreements on them into Ghana, with the caveat clause to allow its proliferate usage in Ghana, in order to spurn out 2 specialist mass industries and encourage self-employment. The Chinese, unknown to many, used the same strategy – when we were busy importing used cars, rice and turkey tails, the Chinese government was busy importing Technologies and Knowhow, and once in China, censored their proliferate use in China by any Chinese citizen who was willing to use it – that's how come even a peasant farming family in China has the technological or know-how to take orders and manufacture flashlights and ipads in their huts on exportable scales – it just didn't happen – it was planned, then executed – you can say all you want about them being sub-standard but the world is still buying from China and we are still here complaining. If we let the domestic supplier market work itself out, those who consistently produce substandard will die off naturally. We can even Target just Africa. But first, let's scout for and buy the technologies and know how to spurn a domestic production and export revolution. Its about tome we thing outside the box that our production base has to be made up of 100 Acres sized companies with industrial machines and a lot of pollution in order for us to feel we have an industrial base. My suggested Budget US$10 million

(2)**Set up a Business Incubation Fund (My suggested Budget: US$10 million) with a 7-member international technology and business vetting panel to be paid on product success commissions only. Get Ghanaians with innovative ideas whether, product, technological or otherwise, seeking funding to present their business ideas, ranging from Inventions, Services, IT technologies to Games/Apps and if successful at vetting, to get $100,000 funding and tech support to develop, launch, market etc their products or technology globally. When successful, Government share is 20-25% of all proceeds over life of product. Or better still, the profit sharing strategy can be ironed out, but at least that's the idea. Hopefully targeting 4-5 successful businesses incubated annually. Done well, this may just spiral into a long term and sustained revolution of entrepreneurship in Ghana but with an international outlook and scope and private Financiers may even join the bandwagon. If any of these technology ventures were to succeed for example, the rewards could be huge. take for example - the total value of all the Ghanaian companies on the Ghana Stock Exchange is $4billion and each of those companies is averagely 27 years old. The value of WhatsApp (a mobile communication app, developed by 2 friends) is $19billion over just 6 years. That's just my way of saying if we can shepherd new Ghanaian business and tech ideas to find global expression and footing, we can beat the development traffic as opposed to the traditional approach to grooming 20-30 year old capital and process intensive companies into maturity before reaping microeconomic rewards - we need to accept the truth that era is almost fading.

For me, the current drawback of current entrepreneurship schemes is that (i) they are very restrictive in the choices participants can exploit - and these are reduced to artisanship and (ii) they are not expansive - very locally focused, not even outward looking regionally, let alone, globally. If we start entrepreneurship from the low levels, we are asking the few readily marketable higher level entrepreneurial ideas within the economy to either wilt away or get demoralized, whereas if we start from the higher level, we can only but drive the lower levels to aspire upwards to a standard above theirs.

My little contribution to Ghana's Home Grown Economic Revolution

Mr. Marricke Kofi Gane
[email protected]

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