Creating An Entrepreneurial Culture In Ghana

Ghana's younger generations remain the country's best hope for the future. If our nation is to prosper, we must do everything we can, to create opportunities for younger generation Ghanaians. I have come across some extraordinary young people over the years. And it is such brilliant individuals who restore my faith in Ghana.

 A major source of frustration for many young Ghanaians is the lack of funding for projects. Perhaps if some of Ghana's IT-savvy younger generations  looked abroad for partnerships with other young people,  to exploit the many opportunities they see around them, they could achieve some of the goals they set themselves.

Nations like Finland encourage their younger generations to seek partnerships overseas. It helps Finnish exports, creates jobs and increases Finland's GDP. Ambitious young businesspeople in Ghana could find partners and funding by applying to the Finnfund: http://www.finnpartnership.fi.

If the ministerial team at Ghana's ministry of trade and industry wants to help create wealth in rural Ghana, the minister and his deputy,  must encourage the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI)  to partner the Netherlands' WageningenUR team, led by Dr. Jan van Dam, which helped the Philippines develop the production of  coir ecoboards, in a project funded by the United Nations Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

 The NBSSI, the Building Research Institute (BRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Rural Enterprises Project (REP) could seek funding from the African Development Bank, the  CFC and the FAO,  to collaborate with Dr. Jan van Dam's WageningenUR team, to replicate their Philippines coir-based ecoboards  project in the western, central and eastern regions of Ghana.

 Coir fibre-based ecoboards are strong and binderless - a perfect high-quality green substitute,  for wood-based boards,  for the building and packaging industries, in a nation with depleted forests: that is  now being negatively impacted by global climate change.  It is  an agro-industrial undertaking with a massive  job-creating  footprint -  that also  has  huge export potential.

The production of binderless ecoboards by private entrepreneurs in those three regions will be a boon for the regions' hard-pressed  coconut farmers  - and create wealth as well as  spawn a lasting entrepreneurial culture in that part of rural Ghana through its value-chain. We must consciously create, nurture and sustain an entrepreneurial culture in Ghana if we are to prosper as a people. One hopes Ghana's  political class will make that a key goal of theirs when elected to power. A word to the wise...