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01.04.2011 General News

Ghana has potential for quality film production-Anibaba

01.04.2011 LISTEN
By GNA

March 31, 2011
Accra, March 31, GNA-Mr Moses Anibaba, British Council Director for Ghana, has expressed confidence in the country's creative industry saying it had the potential to meet demand for quality and innovation production in the television and film industry.

Though the creative industry, particularly the television and film industry, had badly been criticised recently for profanity, pornography and poor quality programmes, Mr Anibaba insisted that quality training and monitoring would push talented entrepreneurs to unleash their potentials.

He was speaking at the graduation ceremony for the Fourth Creative Enterprise Training Programme co-organised by British Council (BC) and the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) in Accra on Thursday.

Mr Anibaba described Ghana as a country endowed with many talented people in the creative industry and recommended that capacity building and skill-honing programmes was needed to mentor the citizenry for national development.

"Ghanaians are very talented…People are looking for quality and innovation in the film industry and Ghana has the potential to meet the expectation", he said.

Mr Anibaba expressed hope that the graduands would practice the things they had learnt to create a difference in the creative industry.

The Creative Enterprise training programme is the initiative of BC and UGBS which began in 2009 with the aim of providing managerial and entrepreneurial skills for persons in the creative sector.

The UGBS created the Enterprise Development Services (EDS) to provide consultation, training and mentorship programmes for players in the Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs) and personnel in the creative industry to grow their businesses.

Mrs Majorie Beeko, EDS Business Development Manager of UGBS, said the four-week training programme had equipped the graduands with the ability to protect their intellectual property, business contracts and had exposed them to negotiating and networking skills and the Ghana's business regulatory framework as well.

She expressed confidence that the modules on business planning, costing and pricing, basic knowledge in financing and business management would equip graduands to excel in their fields of endeavours.

Mrs Beeko said, "a little effort and investment in honing business skills can translate into huge financial successes. At EDS, we maintain that entrepreneurial education is no use of itself, unless it adds value to the entrepreneur's competence and by extension growth to his firm."

In a speech read on his behalf, Mr Johnson Adasi, Director of SMEs at the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI), called for effective Public Private Partnership as a tool to address challenges facing entrepreneurs.

"There is also the need for attitudinal change on the part of Ghanaian SME operators and conscious efforts should be made to have the vision to grow their enterprises and not to be satisfied with marginal growth."

Mr Christian Adusu-Donkor, a graduate of the Fourth Class, appealed to the MOTI and stakeholders to encourage young entrepreneurs to stay in business.

He told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the training programme had offered him the ability to cost his services in a more scientific and efficient way.

Mr Cyril Akonor, a graduand and Creative Designer for Big Ideaz Consult, a private firm, told GNA that he had learnt how to improve on personal branding to carve out a niche in the creative industry.

He was grateful to the managements of BC and UGBS for the programme.

Thirteen people formed the Fourth Class of graduates out of the 73 students so far trained through the UGBS and BC collaboration.

Enterprises under the creative industry include media, television, advertising, software computer games, multimedia production, film and theatre, music, visual and performing arts, fashion design and publishing.

GNA

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