The other day I spoke with a friend who was complaining bitterly about a pair of shoes he bought. He said he had been following that shoe brand for some time and finally decided to make a purchase. The brand makes corporate shoes for men right here in Ghana. When his package arrived after ordering them he realised that the shoes didn’t fit: they were too big. He alerted the company and they said they would bring over a smaller pair for an exchange. It had been a week since they said this and he hadn’t heard from them.
He wasn’t happy and was ranting about how unprofessional Ghanaian businesses are. I nodded my head and it got me thinking and I wondered about the times my own business, Zedi made someone feel this way. My business is not perfect but just seeing how a lot of businesses are run in the few foreign countries I have visited makes it clear that we aren’t doing too well in Ghana, mine included. But let me give you an interesting contrarian view about this today.
You see, in Ghana running a business is an extreme sport, and even though I’m not making excuses for anyone this part of the story needs to be told. Every stage of entrepreneurship in Ghana comes with serious challenges. I know for a fact that choosing to be an entrepreneur requires a lot of sacrifices and hard work but in Ghana, you have to work extremely hard just to scratch the surface. With the erratic supply of electricity, crazy levels of inflation, low levels of education, and expensive internet and transportation costs it’s hard to run a business smoothly. Did I mention that the high unemployment rate is also there to let business owners know that if their venture fails there’s almost nothing to fall back on? You can imagine how much stress this puts on the business.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. There are ways to get past these hurdles and that is often done by “throwing money” at the problems. Surely a generator or a power plant can give you smooth electricity. Buying materials in bulk will give some stability from inflation and the list goes on but most small businesses in Ghana cannot afford a lot of these solutions. It took many years for my fashion business to be able to stock decent quantities of clothes. I can also boldly say that a lot of small businesses in Ghana are grossly understaffed and this is often because there’s just not enough money to cover all the needed salaries. If the shoe business has one lady in charge of everything she will be prone to making mistakes like getting the sizes mixed up or forgetting to schedule the delivery of a replacement.
I hope my message softens your heart a little when it comes to local businesses. All I’m asking for is a little empathy.
