Augustina Akwei
23 August 2007
Accra — SIXTY THREE STUDENTS have been drawn from various educational institutions within the African continent to attend a five-day seminar aimed at exposing them to practical solutions to address the reality of problems being faced by the African continent.
The Imani Summer University Seminar (IMSU) series organized by a non-governmental organization, Imani Centre for Policy and Education was in collaboration with Ashesi University on the theme "Inspiring African Transformation".
The seminar, which was targeted at students with diverse intellectual background and ideas, was aimed at discussing and sharing knowledge related to the theme and to advocate for practical solutions to address these problems.
Pertinent areas being discussed included why Africa should forget Foreign Aid, the concept of Free and Fair trade, property rights and the African concept of Private Ownership, Cedi-redenomination and its economic implications for the country, Entrepreneurship and the spirit of creative destruction.
Other related areas also included Multinational Corporation (MNCs) and Poverty reduction, Globalization and Entrepreneurship Culture and how to manage a social enterprise lead by lectures with distinctive fields.
Among other challenges hampering the development of the African continent, a lecture at Ashesi University who is passionate about entrepreneurship held a discussing relating to the topic during which he said entrepreneurs are the forces of their business since they decide when and how to manage an enterprise.
Also an economic analyst, he said Africans do not recognize powerful ideas regarding this new conceptual ideas prevailing in recent times.
During discussing with students at the seminar, he revealed that one key element that hinders people from engaging in an effective entrepreneurship was based on culture and the way to resolve was to allow competition to exist.
"It is about time we as Africans use entrepreneurship to provide practical solutions to problems that government could not solve and to allow competition as an ingredient to innovations to exist in the country," he noted.
Dr. Yaw Adarwah Antwi, a consultant on property rights and lands policy who spoke extensively on his topic distinguished the distinctive feature between private property rights and common property rights.
"The difference between private property rights and common property rights is that private property rights is being owned by the rights holders to the exclusions of everyone else whereas common property rights is a rights enjoyed by a group of people," he explained.
He further disclosed that property rights systems comprises of the formal, informal, written and written rules, customs and laws that govern the way economic resources are being utilized in the society.
"Private property rights aligns against cost of resource employment decisions more forcefully that public," he said.
He noted that one reason why officialdom prefer communal ownership of property in Africa is to expand their agencies to promote their interest by making rights administration complex.
In this regard, he urged Africans, bureaucrats, politicians and traditional authorities among others not to misconceive the concept and view of property rights in the country. Imani Executive Director, Franklin Cudjoe who dwelt on multinational Corporations (MNCs) and poverty reductions demanded a radical review of MNCs firms that operate in multiple countries at the same time spreading their business across several geographical frontiers.
"An MNCs such as HP, the computer maker for instance, could maintain its marketing department in the United States of America whiles its .buy its components from Malaysia and assemble the products in China and run it after-sale service from Europe," he suggested
He argued that globalization and new demands of consumers in both developed and developing world should make MNCs crucial to enhance the institutional capacity of developing countries.
"MNCs should be made crucial to enhance the institutional capacity of developing countries and to allow economic actors to respond to the new level of institutional effectiveness;" he said.
"Well I would say that MNCs participation is important because firstly, the reduction of poverty depends on the growth of business," he noted.
Explaining, he said poverty reduction requires systematic change since MNCs are the worlds most efficient and sustainable engines of change to make business flourish to enhance economic development in the economy.
In this regard, Mr Franklin stressed the need for business entry and exist rules to be flexible to enable ordinary people create employment for themselves and others. "Government has no business creating employment avenues such as National Youth Employment programmes which are gimmicks for political advantages," he said.
In attendance were Dr. Robert Darko Osei, a research fellow at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana, legon, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the host of Joy fm's super morning show, Peter Jungen an, entrepreneur and also the president of the European Enterprise Institute, June Arunga, a recent law graduate from the University of Buckingham in England and the founder of Open Quest Media LLC, a film production company in the new York city.
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