The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Focus 1 Group of Companies, Mr Kwame Adu-Mante has urged the youth in the country to get involved in the local politics in their communities to push legislators to task in formulating policies that can drive innovation and thrive potentials.
He noted that some of the policy regulations currently in the country have been alien to business growth and have the tendency to kill potentials and culminating into joblessness.
He lamented the situation where startups do not have tax rebates but foreign investors, especially those that operate in the Free Zones enclave are giving rebates to the detriment of the Ghanaian investors.
According to him, the youth should not just be interested in the freebies they will get from politicians but rather channel their requests to getting them to formulate policies that can get them to unearth and nurture their potentials which will result in improving the economy.
Mr Adu-Mante gave the advice when speaking on entrepreneurship at this year’s “Made in Taadi” youth seminar pioneered by the hiplife artiste Kofi Kinaata in Takoradi.
It was under the theme, “Surviving the vicissitudes of COVID-19: The opportunities the pandemic present and dangers of irregular migration.”
He defined an entrepreneur as one who finds a need in society and creatively solves it with the end result, culminating into profits contrary to what people think of just registering a business and having a business account to solicit for funds.
He contended that the focus of entrepreneurship should not be focused on profit making but the creativity in it which is solving society’s nagging problems.
He reminisced when he used to sell anything he chanced on at the Takoradi Market Circle to take care of his Polytechnic education and challenged the youth to embrace hardwork and eschew shyness to find their feet in life.
The CEO therefore called on the youth to build synergies by collaborating with others so as to have a bargaining power to attract investors who may show interest in what they do.
Mr Adu-Mante divulged that challenges to entrepreneurship in Ghana can be grouped into internal and external factors with some internal factors like trying to own everything, lack of passion and failure to gather details about the business in scaling up.
Meanwhile, the external factors could be unfair competition and government policies and regulations, and called on the youth to build relationships with key personalities like lawyers who can help them in legal matters and accountants who can also help them with their accounting needs.
Story: Seth Ameyaw Danquah
