Sub Saharan Africa Growth

I had the opportunity to work in Ghana, West Africa from September to mid-December and more is to come. The tasks: protect foodstuffs in warehouses through creation of standards and a commodity trade exchange. Remember, farmers, traders often lose 30-50% of grain value while storing harvests waiting for higher prices post harvest.

The initial assignment was with Commodity Clearing House and involved a business functional review, interviewing trade prospects, restructuring recommendations and the authoring of a commodity/asset trade manual for the Central Bank review. The CCH team is pictured - (L-R) Sam, Abena, me and Sammy.

The second assignment was to review the Ghana Grains Council (GGC) business model and make recommendations. We felt that the GGC is the premier standard-setter for grain storage conditions. In addition, a finance facility needed to be enacted immediately to secure appropriate warehouse and ancillary services. Lastly, a warehouse receipt liquidity facility needed to be put in place to facilitate transaction velocity - i.e., the farmer produces and sells more grain, the trader transacts more grain and the warehouse gets more volume throughput and hence - more fees.

Fun: Sub-Saran Africa is growing on average at 5% pa with Ghana projected at 9%. It has a robust cocoa and grains sector, gold production and now they found oil. It also has a wealth of human resources in terms of literacy, friendliness and entrepreneurial spirit. There is huge potential for Private Public Partnership finance

Fun-sucker: a) The traffic is gawd-awful - if you thought I-95 at 8AM was bad - spend 1 hour in an un-airconditioned taxi in 120F heat on the Accra Ring-Road (Beltway). b) Power outages- is daily and wreaks havoc on computer systems.

Danger: Ghana controls a wealth of resources and is sandwiched in a relatively unstable if not certainly controversial area - they are very conscious of this and are actively enacting policies to avoid a dependence on oil and corruption. It is not an easy task.

Best part: Laughter. No matter the situation, the poverty or the richness - a laugh is not far away in Ghana. And then a Ghanian hand shake. (now this is a very regimented procedure - a wide arm swing - hands meet in a slap, then a regular shake then a palm shake then a pull-away with a finger snap at the end - to fail a snap requires a redo).

Ghana will do very well. Happy New Year!

(Thanks: ACDI/VOCA and USAID funded the projects - my sincere thanks to the teams - Medaasi Paa)