Centerstage Africa

OccupyGhana has received formal communication from one of its founding leaders, Nenyi George Andah, of his decision to contest parliamentary primaries, and hopefully, the parliamentary elections. This comes at a time when Ghanaians have to grapple with extreme discomfort, lowered productivity, the ever-rising rate of inflation, absolutely inexplicable power cuts, a continuous loss of their purchasing power, limited access to essential services such as quality education and healthcare, and poor quality of service provided by utility companies among others, and with many companies and entrepreneurs being driven out of business. OccupyGhana has, since its inception, been fighting for good governance, good leadership direction and proper economic management to ensure that Ghana develops to its true social and economic potentials. OccupyGhana firmly believes a lack of good leadership is Ghana's biggest problem. Good institutions are important, but we need strong leaders to build ...

Let us pause and consider this: Positive Signs for the future Entrepreneurship Development Continuous ICT Growth Younger CEOs & Business Owners Demand for Quality Education Mobile Telephone Penetration Massive infrastructural development That is how the future is envisioned by some budding young entrepreneurs here in Ghana. It is a truism that with focused vision and effective planning, the above will be realized. One such young change makers is Solomon Elorm Allavi, an IT-savvy entrepreneur with passion for agribusiness and youth entrepreneurship. He established and manages a startup company under the trade name Syecomp Business Services in Accra, Ghana. The company which is almost two years in operation strives to implement market-driven information and communication technology (ICT) solutions to address the limited access to marketing outlets for smallholder farmers and other stakeholders in the agricultural value chain from the farm-gate to the market. With over 60% ...

My name is Raindolf Owusu and I was born in the capital city of Accra in Ghana. I come from a family of eight and I am the fourth born out of six siblings. One special Sunday in the year 2001 after an exhausting day at church we arrived home and to our surprise, our father brought home a computer. The bad news was that it was bought solely for my elder siblings and we the younger ones were not allowed to utilize it. We were only allowed to touch it but with adult supervision. I spent most of my time observing how the computer worked, mostly when my elder siblings were playing games like Prince of Persia or where using Power DVD to watch a movie. The computer was a Compaq Pentium one desktop with one gigabyte hard disk space. I was eleven years old then and I was fascinated by it. We were warned not to use it, but I wasn’t a fan of rules and regulations. So at night when everyone was asleep, I go to the hall to play around with the PC. After a few months I got fascinated with game...

I came across this wonderful piece and I would love to share it with the Continent of Africa. It's such an inspiring piece, full of truth and worth imitating. Its a little review of The Kansas Prayer. Sources say that a session of the Kansas State Senate was opened in prayer by a Pastor Joe Wright.  His prayer was a sizzling one and prompted controversy.  The story says that several members of the Senate got up and walked out and that Paul Harvey aired the text of the prayer and it prompted the largest response he's ever had.  This event actually happened in the Kansas House (not Senate) in Topeka on January 23, 1996.   Joe Wright is the pastor of Central Christian Church in Wichita and was guest chaplain that day.  He prayed a prayer of repentance that was written by Bob Russell, pastor of  Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. According to an article in the Kansas City Star from January 24, 1996, his prayer did stir controversy and one mem...

By Dinfin Mulupi “I read this story about a man who went to a rural village in Africa to sell shoes and saw everyone walking barefoot. He concluded there was no market for him there so he left. Another man arrived a short while later and concluded there was a big market to sell shoes. “I believe it all depends on how you look at the challenges in Africa.” So says Hatem Hariri, managing director for Africa at US-based business communications company Avaya. The company calls itself a “leader in helping organisations around the world succeed by integrating communications with business strategy and operations”. In 2012 Avaya signed a five year contract with Bharti Airtel to operate and manage IT requirements for Airtel’s contact centres across Africa. Hariri currently lives in Dubai with his wife and children and travels across Africa frequently to oversee 52 markets in the continent. Once an ignored market as companies favoured other continents, Hariri says Africa is now an im...

Côte d’Ivoire’s victory against Ghana during the 2015 African Cup of Nations final was widely unexpected and regarded as a historic victory. The Elephants, the Ivorian national football team, were certainly not the favourite team, but they surprised most observers with a repeat of their victory against Ghana 23 years ago, a match again won on penalty kicks. As an economist and a football fan, I cannot resist drawing a certainly non-linear correlation between soccer and economic growth, and revisiting a compelling comparison between the different economic trajectories the two countries have taken in the last decade, and their performance in the most popular sport in the world. The relationship between soccer performance and economic performance has never been confirmed, although Goldman Sachs found an interesting relationship between World Cup victories and equity markets. According to their study, the victory outperforms the global market by 3.5% in the first month, yet such enthu...

Gervais Djondo Gervais Djondo, chairman, Asky Airlines / co-founder, Ecobank 1. What was your first job? I worked for the Social Security and National Pension Trust of Togo in 1964. 2. Who has had the biggest impact on your career and why? My father had a significant impact on my career. He was a successful businessman and instilled good business practice in me from an early age. 3. What parts of your job keep you awake at night? My main concern used to be about passengers’ safety and potential major flight delays but fortunately there haven’t been any accidents over the years. 4. What are the top reasons why you have been successful in business? I believe clear direction, bold execution and more importantly the people that you surround yourself with are critical elements for success. 5. What are the best things about your country? Togo  is an open and very welcoming country and is known for its peaceful environment. The country has a private sector fri...