Zenith holds health walk

Some of the participants walking pass the Flagstaff House

Zenith Bank Ghana Limited over the week-end held a health walk for its staff and customers and other stakeholders through selected streets in the capital, Accra.
The health walk is an annual event by the bank and this year’s event, the sixth of its kinds, had various organisations such as Data Bank and Good Life, a healthy life advocacy company participating.
Speaking after the three hour morning exercise, Mr Daniel Asiedu, Managing Director of Zenith Ghana said the bank had, since the introduction of the walk varied its target audience “to include customers from all walks of life.”

The MD said the move formed part of management’s drive to make the bank accessible to all manner of persons from all walks of life.
 Zenith Bank last year relaunched its Zenith Church Premium Account targeted at churches in the country and the MD now says the bank is currently devising strategies to launch a “befitting product to cater for the peculiar needs of the Muslim brethren.”
He thanked the bank’s customers and other stakeholders for their commitment to the bank’s activities over the years and further urged them to keep the relationship going.
Mr Asiedu was of the view that the health walk would help enhance the already good relationship between the bank and its participated customers and stakeholders. He thus thanked them for devoting time to participate.
The three hour health walk started at the El-Wak Sports Stadium through the 37 Military Hospital to the Flagstaff house, past the Ako Adjei interchange, to the fire service headquarters, then to Danquah circle, Morning Star School, the Ghana International School and back to the El-Wak Sports Stadium. 
pix caption: some o f the participants walking pass the Flastaff house during the health walk

Unilever targets six per cent growth

UNILEVER GHANA Limited, the country unit of Unilever global is promising a six per cent growth leap in its 2011 growth from the 19 per cent recorded last year.
The Ghana subsidiary of the multi-national company last year recorded an impressive end of year growth rate of about 19 per cent after staggering through the first half of the year.
The Managing Director of Unilever Ghana, which now hosts Unilever West Africa operations, excluding those of Nigeria, Mr David Mureithi however, said the company now aimed at consolidating those gains it achieved in previous years. 
Speaking at the 15th Unilever Ghana Customer Awards and Gala Night in Accra, Mr Mureithi said "inspite of the difficulties in 2010, we ended the year with a growth rate of 18.9 per cent."
That acheivement, he said was "driven mainly by the investments the company made in its operations.
Global Unilever has a growth target of doubling its current turnover by 2020 and Mr Mureithi said  Unilever Ghana is determined to achieve that goal by 2015"
He thus thanked the company's customers and distributors for their commitment to their respective operations and urged them to devise more innovative marketing strategies to meet the challenges and opportunities in the years ahead.
He observed that the present socio-economic and political crises in  Cote d'Iviore and Northern Africa coupled with the surging global commodity and crude oil prices had the tendencies of inducing prices of the company's brand up.
"The price of palm oil, one of our key raw material has gone up by 60 per cent in the last six months", Mr Mureithi said adding that these events posed great challenges for the company's 2011 operations.
The MD also repeated the company's call on government to review the Environmental Tax which took effect this year. "We urge the government to meet industry half way by promptly reviewing its plans for the sector for the year in the light of the current realities. The relevant representatives must therefore be engaged to draw up an implementation win-win strategies to enable industry continue to operate cost-effectively", he said.
According to him, Unilever Ghana would in the coming days share with its clients and other stakeholders its plans of reducing environmental impact as it had done with its growth targets for the year.
Mr Akofa Ata, the Customer Development Director (CDD) of the company said Unilever Ghana valued the services and operations of its clients and distributors and would support them in various ways necessary to enable them deliver effectively to the success of both sides.
 About the future, Mr Akofa said "it is our hope to partner you a lot more for us to co-creat some elements of our mixes together." He also used the opportunity to declare 2011 as a 'Turbo Charged Year'  for the company's operations.
Various customers and distributors of the company's numerous brands were awarded various sums of money ranging from GH¢1,500 to Gh¢60,000 as prices for their sterling performances in their respective fields of operations.

Bridging the gender gap The role of entrepreneurship

Ghanaian women and female based groups nation-wide last week joined their colleagues world-wide to mark the centenary celebrations of the International Women’s Day with a promise to bridge the gap between the male and female in the areas of education, training, science and technology. Maxwell Adombila Akalaare asks if economic empowerment of the woman could help accelerate the achievement of that goal in Ghana.

WOMEN across the globe early last week observed the International Women’s Day (IWD), a day set aside to reflect on, celebrate and deliberate on issues affecting the female fraternity.
This year’s event, the 100th of its kind since it started in 1911 was on the theme: “Equal access to education, training and science and technology; Pathway to decent work for women”.
Though celebration of the day started way back in 1911, it was not until 1975 that women of the world – including Ghana - managed to convince the UN to accept to officially use that day to deliberate on issues concerning women; their rights, responsibilities and personal development .
And since then, March 8, 2011 has always witnessed women groups world-wide deliberating on the challenges that confront the female and calling for wider recognition of their role and position in all facets of life.
Here in Ghana, the just ended event was marked by some women-based groups on bridges as they sought to symbolise a pressuring need for society, dominated in voice and positions by the male, to link up with them, the female.
Women groups in the country and gender based advocates thus used the opportunity to call as usual call for the implementation of various measures necessary to bridge the women-men inequality gap which seem to widen as the years go by.
Since 1975 when the UN  endorsed the day as IWD, various themes have been used by the UN for the day's celebrations; most of them calling for wider recognition of the woman in society, an end to gender based violence against women and the likes.
It is however interesting to note that non of those themes has ever openly called for women’s economic empowerment.
But the president of the Ghana Association of Women Entrepreneurs (GAWE), Mrs Lucia Quachey thinks the panacea to the numerous global and nation-wide calls for the need to bridge the gender inequality gap lies in the economic empowerment of the female.
“Without economic empowerment, you can’t talk of equality”, she noted.

Lucia Quachey, Prez, GAWE

Mrs Quachey, also the vice president of the ECOWAS Federation of Women Entrepreneurs insists that those much talks about the need to erase the male-female inequality in the country can only be built when women are empowered economically.
Speaking to the GRAPHIC BUSINESS on ways of accelerating  the economic upliftmnent of women in the country, Mrs Quachey observed that “an economically empowered woman is an asset to everyone; her children, family, community and the nation as a whole”.
The GAWE, formed in 1993 is an association of women entrepreneurs in business and service delivery networked across the country. It is an affiliate of the ECOWAS Federation of Women Entrepreneurs as well as its sister continental body.
The GAWE currently has over 2,500 membership nation-wide who engage in self-employed businesses across all sectors of economic activities in their respective geographical areas.
Mrs Quachey said the GAWE has since its 18 years of existence focused attention solely on the economic side of women’s issues because "if the woman is empowered economically, she would have the ability to help herself, the family and her community and even contribute effectively to her country."
 GAWE, she said has been trying "to give women an economic voice to as a way of helping bridge that gender inequality gap that we all talk about."
Provisional results from the 2010 census puts women at 51.3 per cent, giving them a 2.6 per cent numerical advantage over their male counterparts.
This numerical advantage is however not replicated in the economic, social political and business realms in the country.
In Ghana, women have until recently been relegated to petty trading and other menial economic activities which comes with less incentives yet high risks.
Though lack of verifiable data on the country’s employment situation makes categorisation of jobs on gender bases difficult, ample evidence suggest that about 80 per cent of Ghanaian women are currently engaged in the country’s informal sector. The sector by coincidence also continue to receive lip-service from policy makers and political administrations as women issues do.
Political authorities have over the years promised fat policies for women and their activities as a way of bridging the male-female gap. These policies, normally impressive and mouth watering to women and their pro-groups, little success is however yet to come from most of these paper works.
And that is not news to Mrs Quachey too. “The policies of governments towards women issues in this country are always fantastic on paper. But when it comes to practical terms, they end up paying lip-services to our activities and issues”.
That, she adds beats her imaginations. “Women in this country, have the zeal and energy to work and improve their own lives as well as their communities. What they always need is just for government and the relevant stakeholders to put in few interventions to help them. And yet these authorities are not prepared to do so. That beats my imaginations”, she noted.
According to her, any government that would sincerely and practically focus on the growth of the informal sector (which continues to harbour a majority of the country’s women), such a government “would from then never borrow monies abroad to balance its budget”.
Women issues, she insisted had over the years been handled in “an adhoc manner; not planned, lacking focus and a targeted approach”.
She further wondered why past and current political administartions would always be prepared to borrow monies on concessionary terms to construct roads but would do same to enable women produce more food for the nation’s food processing industry.
The GAWE has as one of its units of operations, a food production, processing and exporting initiative and president of the association explained that the association has over the years linked up rural women farmers with their colleague food processing and exporting members as a way of increasing production while maximising revenues for all sides.
“The challenge, however, is the weather variance, access to credit, lack of access to markets for our produce and capacity building for our members”, Mrs Quachey bemoaned.
She explained that loans are readily not available to women who needs them adding that the current high lending rates offered by commercial banks only helps “buying and selling but not industry”.
 GAWE members in the hinterland she added also face lack of transportation of their produce to the markets thereby hindering their production capacity as well demoralising them in the long run.
On the way forward for economic empowerment of female in the country, Mrs Quachey said “if government really believes in women, industry, and business and across all sectors of the economy, then it should invest in them and reap the promising returns”.
And until that investment is done not again on paper only but in reality, majority of the 51.3 per cent of Ghanaian women would virtually continue to be economically incapacitated and the ripplying effects on poverty reduction and the subsequet attainment of MDG 0ne; eradication of extreme poverty would very much be challenged. 

Online businesses begin to take-off

An online business fair, the Ghana Sales Fair has started operations  in the country. But what would this Internet powered fair bring to the business community?  Maxwell Adombila Akalaare looks at the significance of the online fair on corperate Ghana.

The physical walk-ins,  the enquires, and the subsequent buying of products and services in shops and companies in the country are gradually giving way to online requests for product information and orders following the official launching of an online fair last week.
The Ghana Sales Fair, with domain name as ghanasalesfaironline.com is a customer centred online business exhibition platform that brings to the disposal of customers registered Ghanaian businesses and companies.
This, therefore makes it possible for the customer to enquire about products and services of his/her choice, order for the needed products using computers, iPads, mobile phones as well as other Internet powered tools. The products ordered are then delivered to the customer at his/her door steps.

Philp Gamey, CEO, Web and Software Limited

On how the online fair operates, Mr Philip Gamey, CEO of  Web and Software Limited, a local IT company and architects of this first ever online sales fair explained to the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that registered businesses and companies are set-up in booths to exhibit their products and operations to prospective online customers.
These booths designated to individual businesses, he said are given catch phrases with which they can be accessed by visiting customers upon a click. “People can easily get in touch with needed businesses or companies through a lead form (an imformation request form filled by the customers requesting for a particular service or product from the respective company or business organisation) for estimates, orders or further information about the product or the company’s operation”, the CEO added.
The site, prior to its official opening had recorded close to 60,000 visitors, with about 67 per cent of them being within the country.
According to Mr Gamey, the site's campaigns on facebook, yahoo, google and other search engines were yielding positive results. He mentioned that over 120 businesses and companies had registered to exhibit their products and operations on the Internet powered platform with most of them already recording numerous visits and leads.
 Competitions among corporate institutions the world over have taken an IT-based dimensional shift from the age old man-powered way of doing businesses.
This operational shift has helped reduced the workload of companies and business institutions, eased their operational costs while making more hands available for fresher jobs and expansions within these companies.
But while the business community in the Western world is embracing the ever increasing potentials of  IT and the net in particular, their counterparts in the Africa continent are yet to take full advantage of this technology.
Internet searches in Ghana for products and services, business opportunities and companies’ operations in most cases  turn to foreign-based information companies which the Vice President, Mr John Dramani Mahama says "that is not good for businesses in Ghana".
This  absence of  indigenous online businesses can, however, be attributed to the lack of requisite  IT trained professionals in  the country who can create, maintain and periodically update websites with information on their operations.
It is  incredibly true that most business institutions and companies in the country still do not recognise the need for online presence and are therefore absent in this all rewarding, yet free medium.
The little companies that have online sites do not update them frequetly, a situation one can easily trace to the lack of in-house IT trained persons to carry out these updates.
In a speech read on his behalf by the Employment and Social Welfare Minister, Mr E. T. Mensah at the official launch of the fair, Vice President John Mahamah  observed that such a situation was unfortunate to corporate Ghana.
 "One of the challenges we often hear from our colleagues in the business community is the difficulty of getting consistent business. Regrettably, however, most businesses in Ghana have not even considered the establishment of an online presence to make it easier for their customers to find them", Mr Mahamah bemoned.
He was however, optimistic that initiatives like the Ghana Sales Fair would enable customers to find products and services on one platform, cause Ghanaian businesses to develop partnerships between industries and customers and further position "Ghana as a technologically ready nation eager to collaborate with the rest of the world in business partnerships.".
But even before businesses and customers reap the full potentials of this online fair, industry experts and prospective customers fear the information provided by customers could as well be misleading and therefore cause customers to waste yet another precious time requesting for products that barely exist.

Philip Gamey, CEO, Web & Software stressing a poit during the launch

To address this situation, management of Web and Software, however, explained that its online exhibition fair is only available to registered companies in the country who have the requisite certificates to prove that they are actually into business. "We inspect their office location to ensure that they are actually into business. Once that is done we take the company’s value proposition and other details for the booth and set them up", Mr Gamey said.
In Ghana today, looking for estimates or proposals from companies mean spending hours if not  days visiting one place or the other in search of the companies and business institutions that meet one’s needs.
And with traffic situations in the capital Accra amd other cities become intensed, go on a shop to shop request for information is indeed time and resource wastage
The number of working hours spent on the Internet by customers is meanwhile on a consistent increase and Mr Gamey insisted the "Ghanasalesfair.com presents a unique platform that would enable customers to connect with Ghanaian businesses right from where they are without any lost to man working hours".
The average exhibitor, he said has six leads per day and the highest lead since the fair was launched has been 28 by a real estate company.
About the customer, Mr Gamey said instead of spending time and fuel driving around in search of business or product information in shops “that time and revenue should rather be diverted to address pressing business issues”.
On the challenges of the fair, Mr Gamey said some companies would still have to develop their internal capacities to enable them meet growing demands to be generated from the new online customers.
Explaining further, the CEO said "a decoration company turned down two online clients asking him to provide wedding decoration services through our fair because the company could only service one client a day.
The successful online exhibition coupled with high patronage among customers and businesses means that any moves towards electronic payment for goods bought online would be easily embraced.
  And the CEO of the company running the ghanasalesonline.com says "we are in talks with two banks on the possibility of creating an electronic payment storefront for each exhibitor and will soon come out with information on how companies can take advantage of this service too".
But for now, Mr Gamey says "the fair would remain an exhibition platform for registered businesses in Ghana."