Kantanka’s Engine Display on Company’s Website Is Perfectly Savvy, Here’s Why

I have been meaning to promptly respond to an article which appeared on the Modernghana.com website that cavalierly presumed to lecture the proprietors and operators of the Kantanka Automobile Company (KAC), a local Ghanaian industry pioneer, on what aspects of their vehicle manufacturing processes or assembling line details to publish or not to publish on the company’s website, but I have been mired in other pressing happenings on the Ghanaian political scene, thus the delay in composing and posting my rather terse rejoinder. Anyway, I was amused because the same critic who has been literally swamping readers with pabulum over how wicked Europeans and Americans are constantly scheming to destroy the Black-African species of humanity with lab-created viruses, wants the directors and proprietors of the Kantanka Automobile Company to emulate these same wicked and anti-African Europeans by keeping the secret of how they manufacture engine parts for their vehicles close to the vest, as it were, or the chest.

Well, the fact of the matter is that getting into the game rather late, the Kantanka Automobile Company has yet to establish its bona fides or industry and market credibility with the overwhelming majority of Ghanaian motorists and vehicle owners and potential buyers of the Kantanka Brand of Automobiles. Consequently, any attempt to make a secret of how their engine parts are manufactured would likely provoke cynical and speculative rumors regarding the fact of whether, indeed, KAC actually manufactures the engine parts of its vehicles themselves or they simply import the entire thing and then mischievously deceive Ghanaians into believing the cock-and-bull story of being in complete control of their auto-making components /andor processes. For this reason, letting visitors and prospective buyers who go their website in on the minute details of how their vehicles are manufactured removes any doubts that stereotypically inquisitive Ghanaians and other Africans are wont to peddle about the quality and durability of KAC-made vehicles is a matter of course or even an imperative necessity.

Then also, it is rather naïve and almost scandalously obtuse for any critic to facilely presume that in an age when one can easily Google in order to learn how to put a nuclear bomb together, that it actually makes sense for any Johnny-Just-Come-Lately to the auto-manufacturing industry to make a secret of how his/her automobile engines are made, when access to automobiles is much easier than the purchase of an assault rifle or even a common pistol. As well, the fact that Apostle Sarfo, the founder of KAC, is widely known to have “studied” and “graduated” from the Kumasi University of Suame Magazine, more than amply attests to the steely confidence of the man and his employees to feel either jittery or diffident about their ability to effectively compete on a level-playing field.

Which was precisely why in the wake of the Akufo-Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government’s recent striking of a historic deal with the Germany-based Volkswagen Automobile Manufacturing Company, to open an auto-assembling plant in Ghana, Mr. Kwadwo Sarfo, Jr., the man presently in charge of KAC, stated categorically that his company’s primary worry was far less about the likely stiff competition that the world’s Number One auto manufacturer would pose to KAC, than the imperative necessity for the government to make laws that are protective of young and fledgling local auto manufacturers like KAC, while at the same time ensuring that long-established companies like Volkswagen were permitted to healthily compete in a friendly but legally impartial atmosphere.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 15, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]