Right Consult, an electronic security firm, has won the ultimate award–The Star Award of the Year– at the maiden Invest In Africa (IIA) SME Excellence Awards held at the Labadi Beach Hotel in Accra.
Country Manager of Invest In Africa, Clarence Nartey, challenged SMEs to build local businesses for global markets. He revealed his outfit will be investing heavily in the capacity building of SMEs in the country.
According to Mr. Nartey, there are ongoing partnerships with government, through the Ministry of Business Development, to grow about 20 indigenous companies into multinationals capable of competing globally within the next four years.
According to him, IIA Ghana is aimed at: “coordinating private sector efforts to build local content and develop the needed capacity and skills for sustained growth and jobs creation, it has grown to become a relevant local content player with a vibrant home-grown business ecosystem.”
Country Manager of the African Development Bank, Dr Yero Baldeh, urge the government to prioritize some key areas to enable local and upcoming entrepreneurs to expand their tentacles.
Dr. Baldeh further said an enhanced access to finance, reinforced business support, provision of support for entrepreneurship development as well as the promotion of an enabling environment will help entrepreneurs to compete favourably.
Speaking on the importance of the Excellence Awards, Dr. Yero Baldeh was hopeful the ceremony will “empower SMEs to find new innovative ways of resolving challenges that confront them and enable them to seize opportunities presented by regional and international markets.”
Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Carlos Ahenkorah, also reiterated government’s resolve to embolden the private sector in fulfilment of its industrialization agenda.
He opened that efforts are being made to link young entrepreneurs to the relevant business market through the establishment of incubators across all University campuses in the country.
The Invest in Africa (IIA) SME Excellence Awards have been developed to honour local businesses who, through the ongoing flagship business linkage and skills development programme of the IIA, have put up enviable potential to scale up and participate in supply chains of larger organisations both in Ghana and abroad.
CEO of Right Consult, Godwin Kofi Akuamoah, said “the award is a recognition of the hard work of the entire team. This will motivate us to expand our business to other West African countries outside of Ghana and Sierra Leone where we are currently present.
Other winners were Stredstar Engineering and Construction LTD winning Sustainable Business of the Year category, Joissam Ghana Ltd taking home the Scale-up Business of the Year award, AB Engineering winning the Business Transformation Award.
The rest are Asheba Africa grabbing the Business Innovation Award and Female Entrepreneur Award, Sustainable Agro LTD for the Business Linkage Award, Agri Access Ghana LTD for Award Merit Award among others.
