Business
While Economists Waver, Technology Entrepreneurs on the Rise in Ghana
While ministers struggle to prop up the cedi, a new wave of industrialists and tech entrepreneurs are providing an economic jump start of their own. Following the cedi’s rapid depreciation over the past year, the government has been under pressure to rescue the currency.
In January, some members of parliament called for the sacking of Bank of Ghana governor Henry Kofi Wampah who, together with finance minister Seth Terkper, then took to issuing new measures to get the cedi back on track. Also part of the government’s economy-boosting agenda is a renewed effort to encourage locally made goods.
Crucial to this move is the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI). One member of the association is Comfort Aniagyei, founder and managing director of pro- motion and marketing company Ghana-Made. In December 2013, GhanaMade received a special recognition award from the AGI for its efforts in championing the cause of local production.
Alongside running her own company, Aniagyei is also director of finance for the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation. As the government moves to offer more considered support to manufacturers, as explained by trade and industry minister Haruna Iddrisu, it will have to consider the country’s erratic power supply.
In February, Ghana Grid Company embarked on a load-shedding program after system failures occurred at the Volta River Authority’s thermal plant. The exercise came a year after the country suffered chronic power outages over a period of six months. In January, the government gave assurances that there would be no load-shedding this year.
The use of generators will also prove pricey following the government’s removal of fuel subsidies in June and an increase in utility prices in October 2013. The completion of the country’s gas processing plant was expected to ease power problems, but it has been delayed.
Tullow Oil, one of the main partners at the Jubilee oil field, has resorted to flaring gas. Ghana National Gas Company chief executive George Sipa-Adjah Yankey said in January that gas should come online by May. In the same month, however, energy minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said it was unlikely the oft-shifted deadline would be met.
Data center delays
Elsewhere in the cabinet, communications minister Edward Omane Boamah has settled into the position he took up in January 2013 when he replaced Idrissu. Omane Boamah has been overseeing the completion of the $30 million national data center, which will handle all of the government’s data and eventually also house the communications ministry.
Political insiders tell The Africa Report that the minister is fighting delays to finishing the center, which is now expected to reach completion in the first quarter of 2014. It marks an important move to centralize digital information. The ministry is also working on the second phase of establishing community information centers across the country, with a particular emphasis in providing educational resources to communities in the northern regions.
Capitalizing on the technology revolu- tion is young entrepreneur Derrydean Dadzie. Dadzie is the 31-year-old founder of DreamOval, a consultancy and software solutions company whose clients include Ghana Commercial Bank. Having founded the company at just 24, Dadzie is also working on establishing Dreamville, a proposed research and training site for budding technologists.
He is just one of a growing number of young people working with technology in Ghana. BloggingGhana, a group of 100 or so bloggers, launched a crowd-sourcing campaign to fund the country’s first physical social media hub in January. During the 2012 elections, the organization led the Ghana Decides project to inform the electorate before and after the vote. The group’s newest project is Inform Ghana, a platform that enables the sharing of information on health, education, governance and education to encourage interaction between members of the public and civil society groups.