Enterprise Development in Ghana

April 15, 2008. I just returned from an extremely insightful yet brief ten days in Accra, Ghana, where my primary purpose was to participate in a Pro-Poor Enterprise Development training hosted by the Microenterprise and Development Institute. Coincidentally, my very good friend from LSE, Avani, has been living in Accra for the past year or so, so it was the perfect opportunity to meet her again as well as her lovely one year old daughter! I can’t believe how much life has changed in the past few years!

The training was extremely informative. I had attended a Community-Based Microfinance training hosted by MDI late last year in Zanzibar, so I was pretty confident that this one would be just as resourceful and useful in the field. The training commenced with a half day session on community economic development as a holistic way of fostering sustainable development at the grassroots level within neighborhoods, cities, and rural areas across the globe. Coincidentally, an old friend from Nigeria who had also attended the Zanzibar training had decided to also participate in the PPED training. I was, yet again, reminded of how small this world is when she appeared as the doors to an elevator opened in our residence hall.

The remaining five days of the training were devoted to studying the current market development theory and best practices in subsector selection, value chain analysis, support market assessment, business development services, and intervention design. The most interesting aspect of the training was the practical opportunity to conduct a brief market and value chain assessment on the dairy sector in Accra. We spent a full day visiting each part of the supply chain from the dairy farmers to the community collection centers to the refinery and packaging factory, and finally landed in one of the largest supermarket chains in Accra, where the products end up on a shelf ready for consumer purchase.

Module two, focusing on implementation strategies applying all that we had learned in week one, was scheduled for a second week of training. Unfortunately, duty was calling back in Swaziland, and I was required to head back to Mbabane. Hopefully, I’ll have another chance to finish up the training in the near future.