'Ghana Go Global' Workshop To Be Held

Ken Morse
A workshop aimed at supporting Ghana's ambitious firms to explore the world will be held over the weekend.

It is being hosted by Songhai and Entrepreneurship Ventures in collaboration with Ken Morse, the founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Entrepreneurship programme under an initiative dubbed, Ghana Go Global (3G).

Under the initiative, local companies are expected to be connected not only to innovative companies but also gain access to centers of excellence such as MIT and the Kendall Square/Route 128 entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Dr. Hene Aku Kwapong, a founding partner at the Songhai Group, said in a news release that they were determined to use the initiative to expose ambitious companies to other entrepreneurship hubs around the world where there is specifically designed training programmes to provide the most appropriate coaching and support.

'Ghana Go Global (3G) is a global growth programme to enable ambitious innovative companies to achieve their full potential. The carefully selected companies with high potential for global growth seek to increase their annual revenues by 800 percent to 1000 percent within five years.'

He said that the programme 'provides training and coaching, and then creates links to European and US customers, and the Boston entrepreneurial ecosystem.

'Companies will be taught and coached by experienced business people with proven track records who will deliver just in time training, and design a custom coaching programme for each participating company. This programme has been run successfully in USA, UK, Spain, Canada and Turkey.'

He said that under the Ghana Go Global (3G) Programme, Ghanaian entrepreneurs are coached not by academic theory but 'by other successful entrepreneurs who have launched multimillion dollar companies and have walked in their shoes, who know what works and what doesn't, and have demonstrated repeated success in the cruel crucible of the marketplace.

'Why shouldn’t new companies emerge from our local pool of talent to tie in with a global venture community and be the ones who list on Wall Street and dominate their markets globally?' he queried.

'A country’s knowledge capital can be estimated looking at what it produces and sells to the rest of the world.  Today a bulk of Ghana's economic growth is coming from selling resources we dig from the ground and ship outside,' adding that 'that is not sustainable.'

He said 'the only way we can generate the next big level of economic growth is by harnessing our existing knowledge through innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to create more high value jobs in the face of a tsunami of global competition.'

He said that Ghana can take the lessons learned from other regions and ensure that more of our young ambitious companies achieve sustainable growth, create high value jobs and suppliers and earn their rightful place on the regional or even global stage.'

Dr. Kwapong said Ken Morse, a founding Managing Director the MIT Entrepreneurship programme (1996-2006) and a serial entrepreneur himself who has launched six high tech companies (3Com, Aspen Technology and 4 other startups) and a global sales veteran will lead the discussion.

'Ken has been active for over 30 years commercializing novel technologies and bringing inventions from lab to market.'