2020

There’s a reason why developed countries have the masses opting for trains day in day out. It is so essential that civilisations have spent the last two centuries perfecting its design and function, from the primitive steam locomotives to bullet trains that look like they might even be able to fly. Before I even elaborate on the railways situation in Ghana as it stands, let me offer the requisite context with which you can truly appreciate the paragraphs that consequently follow. Let’s stick to the facts. This is an opinion piece. Think of how easily accessible Kumasi, Tamale and the Northern half of Ghana is now; one flight away. My BDM proposed at the Mole National Park one weekend and was at the Tema office first thing Monday morning. The reach of our brand #RonnieIsEverywhere exploded when we started saying “if you’ll pay for the plane ticket Ronnie will come”. On my WhatsApp status, one friend of mine flaunted her passport standing by a plane. I asked if she’s travelling and she said, “it’s Kumasi, I’ll be back in town by nightfall, it’s not like I’m travelling biaaa.” Ayooo. #WeirdFlexButOk. You see, I still remember a time when going from Accra to Kumasi was “travelling”. And no, I am not that old. Now think goods, lots of goods, goods that can neither enter nor fit into one STC bus. Think heavy machinery. Think even the automobile spare parts market, Abossey Okai. Think thousands of Ghanaian youth that cannot regularly afford flights or even STC bus tickets on their income. And think of how an easy but far cheaper connection between Northern Ghana and the South (and left and right and centre and behind) can affect many parts of Ghana’s economy. Be business-minded. Think outside Greater-Accra. Think trade. Think new customers, new clientele. Think human resource. Think additional thinktank. Think of YOU as an entrepreneur and what you can do with this. This is why when I read some time ago that Ghana is set to revive its railways industry budgeting $21 billion (with a B), I screamed “YES!!!!”. It will take some time to complete BUT IT WILL HAPPEN. When it does, it will be open season for those that can see how it connects whole new markets within about half of the nation with the other half, and how it betters many existing ones. Context is now complete. Let’s dive in. I’ll stick to the facts. This is an opinion piece. History of Ghana’s railways. It’s been nearly 120 years since our British colonialists constructed the first railway lines. The colonial infrastructure made over a century ago helped shape the economic geography of Ghana. As a British colony, Ghana (then known as the Gold Coast) was developed by Europeans for Europeans. At the time, railways were considered the best mode of transportation. How else could that many produce and minerals be transported way back then. STC was not in service. The railway system of Ghana began in 1898 under the Gold Coast Civil Service, with its headquarters at Sekondi. But after the construction of the Takoradi Harbour, it was transferred to Takoradi. The purpose of the railroad was to transport minerals and crops from the mainland to the harbour, which were then shipped to Europe.  Two railway lines, built by the British in 1898-1918, were primarily established for military domination against natives or other colonial powers. But the railway also supported the extensive extraction of precious minerals and cash crop agriculture.  The first railroad, the Western line, linked the coastal town of Sekondi with the gold-rich enclaves of Obuasi and Tarkwa. It was then extended to the hinterland city of Kumasi for military domination. Mining required the transportation of heavy machinery, large quantities of firewood (or coal), and labourers from other regions. European mining companies reaped benefits through this railway system of precious minerals such as gold, bauxite, manganese, and diamonds. The second, the Eastern line, linked the capital city of Accra to the network through Kumasi, affecting the economic and spatial development of Ghanaians through integration. This railway connectivity strongly affected the production of cash crops such as coffee and cocoa. As soon as the second line opened, farmers decided to use it to transport crops, massively decreasing their transportation costs (aha!). Fun Fact: The Governorship of William E. Maxwell (1895-97) was instrumental to shaping the railway system back then, because he had previous experience in Malay State where railways were used in tin mines. In 1919, Sir Gordon Guggisberg was appointed governor of the Gold Coast. He believed that the country was capable of attaining the development levels of Europe. He undertook the advancement and extension of the railway system, built a seaport, and constructed an extensive network of roads. Guggisberg focused on promoting the growth of the economy to give Ghana a competitive advantage in the world market. His policy aimed at rapid development of the country. By the mid-1920s, rail lines covered large portions of the southern part. The expenses accounted for 31.4% of total public expenditure between 1898-1931.  Around 80% of cocoa, the country’s main export commodity, was transported through rail, making Ghana the world’s largest exporter of the crop by 1911. By 1927, cocoa amounted to 80% of Ghana’s exports. By the 1960s, railways transported nearly 2 million tonnes of freight and 8 million passengers a year. This cheaper, convenient mode of transportation was a quicker way to carry more cargo.  Why Railways The country inherited a functional railway system at the time of independence. But by the mid-1970s, the system began to see a decline due to poor management, lack of maintenance, and the competition from roads. Decades of neglect by post-independence governments have brought the sector down to its knees. As the country developed, people opted in favor of road travel and others. Currently, only about 13% of Ghana’s original networks are operational, and I use the word “operational” very conservatively.  Countries all over the world recognize the importance of an effective railway system. Ghana is

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be part of a mentoring session with a Founder Institute cohort at the Stanbic Bank Incubator in Accra. It was good, very good. Joining us were Foster Awintiti Akugri, the Stanbic Bank Incubator Manager & Founder of Hacklab Foundation, and Kamil Nabong, the CEO at Hub and Fund. The picture you see here is full of brilliant start-ups that attended the mentoring and idea-sharing session on Customer Development. The hotseat was just as fun as well. Founders get 60-seconds to pitch their start-ups and get instant feedback. The energy with this is electrifying, because many times you can see the passion in the eyes and hear it in the voices of these guys. Still, where is it all headed? Are they locking down customers? Is that passion being channelled properly to drive up sales and grow customers? This is what the Founder Institute is all about: learning from those who’ve already done it and drawing from their personal experiences and lessons learned. It’s like a cheat code to manoeuvring your start-up. I will detail what I spoke on. I spoke last so I had to freestyle anyways. No need to rehash what everyone can read in a textbook. So, let’s get the textbook stuff outta the way then I’ll add my personal experience. What is Customer Development? A lot of the time, your idea is sound, or at least it will be after a little tweak and fine-tune here and there. Your product is also something someone can buy 9 out of 10 times. The problem that most start-ups face is a lack of LOYAL CUSTOMERS. Because… well… they’re just starting. Customer Development is the formal process used to discover, test and validate many business ideas, all towards building the right product the customer will actually opt for.  Steve Blank, in his 2005 book titled ‘The Four Steps to the Epiphany’, wrote about his life as an entrepreneur in the 90’s while in Silicon Valley and what he saw several start-ups do to launch their products. A pattern began to form right before his eyes after analysing his collaborations with start-up after start-up. He noticed that a start-up is not just a smaller version of a big company. A start-up has unique problems, totally different from that of a big company. So, he figured start-ups should be asking certain questions: A startup or start–up is a company or project within the first stage of its operations, initiated by one or more entrepreneurs to seek, effectively develop, and validate a scalable business model. Start-ups are usually a shoestring endeavour as opposed to a fully-grown company. Steve Blank concluded that for start-ups to survive, they need to have a methodical means of arriving at “repeatable and scalable business models”. He identifies a four-step framework that is designed to lead you to a product or service that the customer actually wants, while the stepwise process helps you to intimately understand your target market.  The four steps of the framework are: What I like about this four-step framework is that it is suitable for start-ups in the early stages of their development while also being perfectly suitable to large companies looking to expand or better their already existing products or services. When deployed properly, Customer Development helps any business become more efficient by providing an acute focus on where to direct capital and other resources. You are more likely to find the right product for the right market this way. Product-Market Fit is the key to accelerated market traction. So that concludes the textbook content. The cohort were very much interested in hearing how Foster, Kamil and I executed simple methods that moved our respective companies a step closer to customer growth. The session was fun. Kamil detailed useful ways of executing the steps in the above framework, like methods of information gathering from the customer amongst many others. Foster Akugri? That sharp guy Foster? I get why Stanbic Bank Ghana has so much faith in him. He is the King of useful quips and brainstorming and we all mooched on that. Looking back at how you overcame some struggle always brings a smile. The real fun is when we all realise that at the start-up phase, we are all slaying our very own Goliaths, only with difference faces from different sectors.  Here are 4 tools I shared as what helped a couple of friends build Maxwell Investments Group. 1. Drop the ego. The world can be cruel. The business community can be very harsh. As a start-up, I couldn’t keep count of the number of doors shut in our faces. Everyone has a “rude receptionist” story. We had many dozens by the first year. Your target market are the same people that will belittle and mock your idea. It will not feel like you’re on a transformational journey of corporate enlightenment. No. It more probably feels like a gut punch or a slap in the face. When you remove the filter of an ego, you stop reacting, you stop interrupting, you start listening and then a lot of the work with implementing the four-step framework start resolving itself. At times, what you require is really as simple as sales, the customer’s money in exchange for your product or service. Why not drop the ego, let the customer go through whatever motions they need to go through, and then make the sales – simple! Of course, there’s a line to draw if you want to adopt this. Mine was that, as long as my Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms are intact, then what’s there to lose. Read about your rights here: www.bit.ly/38s5hrg Adopt a culture of humility and keep your eye on what really matter – sales and customer growth. 2. Customers don’t want to hear of your labour pains – just deliver the baby! Life with a start-up gets difficult. So, you’d be tempted to lament on how hard the situation is when trying to secure a deal or when justifying why we shouldn’t be bargained down. Don’t do that.

Farming and Agribusiness are back in vogue! Something is definitely up there when of all the choices available to him, famous actor and political aspirant John Dumelo opts to be a large-scale farmer. That’s because he gets it. That’s because he knows that by growing farm produce for both human and animal consumption, he taps into an agricultural sector that contributes to almost 20% of Ghana’s gross domestic product (GDP). In 2009, that figure was 30.99%. The inevitable rise of industry and the incorporation of formal business models into every scalable enterprise brought boundless opportunity for every business sector. Ghanaian farmers get that even more now. The 2010 Population & Housing Census revealed that, even though agricultural households accounted for 54.2% of the total population, a large number of the members of those households lacked formal education. That situation is vastly different now. Agriculture continues to marry Business Models Today, I know medical doctors, professionals in tech, and yes even most famed actors who are heavily into farming or agribusiness because they understand what happens when agriculture marries business models properly. It is the pursuit of that marriage that impels our nation’s General Agricultural Workers’ Union (GAWU) of Ghana’s Trade Union Congress (TUC), founded in 1959,to appoint me as their first-ever Business Advisor to the collective whose members are tens of thousands strong. I have always found labour unions remarkable in their ability to facilitate growth and welfare by quite easily demonstrating the popular adage of the whole being much larger than the sum of the individual parts. From Farm to Fork I am not and will not be involved in wage negotiations, employee benefits nor anything remotely in that line. My mandate is to expedite business momentum and trade. My network and I will be providing real business opportunities, real business solutions and not excuses. Maxwell Investments Group and its affiliates like our trading subsidiary, TAFT Commodities (est. 2006), already incorporate many of these into our supply-chain enabling activities while we endeavour to take harvests all the way from farm to fork. Farmers get a bigger win when they are aware of basic economic concepts like turnover and value chain. So just like how a grain of soya bean takes calculated steps to becoming nutritious soy milk, Ghana farmers are finally getting there. I have witnessed it. For instance, coffee bean farmers in the Akuapem area are utilising the commodity as a catalyst for rapid rural development under budding companies like Asili and it’s beautiful. Ghana’s farmers are better positioned now to engage you because they are adopting Trade Facilitation principles and guidelines that will continue to serve them very well. Trade Facilitation The main goal of our Trade Facilitation efforts is to get farmers to export more in a faster, safer, more affordable and more standardised way. Imagine your local farmers effortlessly trading with global markets, moving a majority of their harvests for exports. The processes require some degree of simplification for the average farmer to comprehend the formalities, documentation and other complexities of the export-import markets. We do what it takes. This is happening now in Ghana. Farmers are seeking to have more of the available rewards on the whole value chain. It is not without its challenges. As farmers try to shy from “middlemen” who negotiate deals that have more of the available margins tilted towards them, many have been forced through countless disappointments and setbacks to have a healthy appreciation for the formal safeguards that protect exporters. As Business Advisor to GAWU, I have heard many tales, even recently, of financial losses that I feel may have been averted if only these farmers understood the different avenues available to them. I keep telling them, “You have to address what happens IF you’ve done your part well and they still say no; with your capital stuck in these exports, you are going to be negotiated down regardless of your CAD agreements”, and this happens to them a lot. These unpleasant conversations are always necessary to open farmers’ eyes to the fact that they have the power to negotiate for better payment terms and delivery requirements through the insertion of clauses that address these loopholes. Many importers respect farmers that demand for reciprocity of quality delivery. This is because by demanding for reciprocated value, you prove your competency and knowhow to deliver in the first place. Nonetheless, Ghanaian Farmers continue to build a strong capacity to tap into foreign markets by adopting these four (4) principles of our Trade Facilitation efforts with them: Standardisation Standardisation is one of the first steps towards Trade Facilitation. If you’ve been to the typical community market in Ghana, you’d know the only modus operandi is that there is no modus operandi; it’s all about how well you bargain, and outsiders usually get crushed. For cash crops, Ghanaian farmers are moving towards readily accepting standardisation guidelines. Standardisation is the creation of the framework of a set of agreements on trading parameters to which all parties of an industry, local and abroad, must adhere. This is to make sure that all the processes within said industry associated with the production of goods and services are done within the agreed upon working parameters. Ghana Cocoa Board is one of the best examples of how a regulatory body can so well standardise the growing and trading of a cash crop. Standardisation efforts by our local farmers are painting a familiar picture to importers outside, thus creating the trust and encourage for trade participation. Harmonisation After the creation of working frameworks of agreed trading parameters, farmers in Ghana are understanding that all these should mimic and mirror how things are done in other countries within the international trading community as well. Conversation moves along much more smoothly when responses are filled with “oh yes that’s how we also do it in our country”. Cashew farmers in Ghana are starting to accept the need to adopt harmonisation at a faster pace, in an effort to match