Lord I Need A Sign (My First Poem)

Months have gone
Years have passed
The dream still lives
Will I ever fulfill it

I wish to get it sealed
Sooner than later
From childhood I aspired
To get it done early

The present presents many challenges
Sometimes I wonder
If it could be done
In a timespan I thought it

There is still hope
But Lord I need your sign
I think about
It is my dream
If I will be able to make it happen
Lord please I need a sign

@poeticabdul

6 Things that Hinder Innovation in Ghana

I wrote this article listing 6 things that hinder innovation in Ghana. As part of an effort to drive traffic to my new website, I will like you to visit the link below to read the full article. Thanks.

http://opinionghana.com/categories/business/18485-6-things-that-hinder-innovation-in-ghana

5 Promising Ghanaian Tech Startups that May Soon Become Multinational

Ghana's technology and software industry is relatively a younger one and with this comes many challenges for those who are in these fields. Countries like Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria have received some level of international recognition for their software industries. In some of these countries, they have had huge multinational companies buy out some of their budding startups.

In Ghana, the software industry is growing and already is seeing some promising startups that may soon become multinational. In this article, I take a look at five of such startups that are ready to be sky rocketed.

1. RetailTower

RetailTower is an ecommerce marketing solution. RetailTower enables merchants to create campaigns on price comparison engines.

They seamlessly integrate between e-commerce platforms and comparison shopping engines. With a few clicks, merchants can export their inventory product descriptions, images, and prices from e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and osCommerce to publish their products on shopping websites.

RetailTower has over 11,000 online retailers who are all outside of Ghana an indication of their potential in terms of growth and expansion.

The company was adjudged the Utility APP of the year 2013 at the Topappawards, Ghana.

2. Dropifi

Dropifi is a smart contact widget that helps small businesses better analyze, visualize and respond to incoming messages. They promise to help small businesses offer better customer support, capture lead and drive sales through the roof.

Dropifi has over 8000 small businesses as customers all over the world which include TKC Apparel, Colombia International, ALMA Soul among others.

With the nature of their business and customers, it is expected that, they will soon have offices in some countries in Europe and the US to address their growing customer base.

Dropifi has been featured on many international platforms including Forbes, the Huffington Post, TechCrunch and were recently selected as the first and only African startup to be among the 500 Starups.

3. Leti Arts

Leti Arts is a startup that is focused on Africa's superheroes. Leti Arts is bringing Africa's rich folklore to life through the media of comics and mobile gaming.

This tech company is set to launch The Epic of Ananse, an exciting new comic book series and mobile game that reimagines the ancient fable of the African trickster god.

With their target market and intentions of running TV series around these superheroes, they might soon expand into other African countries. Already, they have offices in Ghana and Kenya.

Leti Arts has been featured on the BBC World Service, Polygon and were recently selected as World Summit Award (WSA) Nominee. They were winners of the Entertainment APP and APP Developer category of the TopAPPSaward 2013, Ghana.

4. mPawa

mPawa is a job matching service developed by Innokiq. mPawa supports the posting of jobs and the onwards notification to blue collar workers in Africa.

They wish to bridge the gap that exists in the current blue collar recruitment space; that is getting blue collar workers into a centralized location and allowing employers to easily reach them.

Their focus on the African continent and the successes in the countries they are already in indicates a possible expansion into other African zones.

mPawa has offices in Ghana and Kenya.

5. SMSGH

SMSGH is a Ghanaian tech company that provides bulk SMS, corporate SMS solutions, mobility and web solutions among others.

Their story of three young graduates coming together to build Ghana's first non-telco internet SMS messaging gateway and software is an inspiring one.

The have not only succeeded in building an idea into just a company but a company that sees millions of cedis as yearly revenue. Their turnover is expected to reach GHC10 million in 2013.

SMSGH processes about 10.8 messaging requests every second and over 28 million business-critical & subscriber messages monthly with more than 7 million mobile subscribers relying on them to inform, alert, notify, transact, interact, monetize and share mobile data.

Their vision of becoming an international brand for business messaging is on course and we might soon see them expand into other African countries.

They were adjudged the APP company of the year 2013 at the Topappawards. One of their products, Mpower Payments was also adjudged the most innovative new app 2013, finance app 2013, top user experience app and was the overall winner, the top app of the year 2013 at the same Topappawards, Ghana.


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5 Very Important Things Ghanaian Businesses Take For Granted--Part II

In the part one of this two part article, I mentioned content marketing and email marketing as some of the things Ghanaian businesses have taken for granted and as a result are paying dearly for. In this part, I will continue to mention the three other things.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a collection of tactics that help a website rank in the first positions of Google for search terms that describe their business.

Everyday, millions of people use Google to search for everything from 'which premier league team won the championship in 1987' to 'electronic appliance shops in Accra'. These people click on the first results Google returns and have no time to check what is in the 25th page of the results.

How do businesses make sure they are also among the top results to be shown to the 'Googler'. This is where SEO becomes very important.

When SEO is done right, businesses see significant growth in organic visitors to their site and once the business site contains all the information needed by the information seeker, then the seeker becomes a customer.

There are many consulting service providers in Accra who are mostly small businesses and as such have financial constraints that prevent them from carrying out aggressive advertising campaigns. With SEO, all they need is an expert who will use keywords to make sure whenever someone googles 'consulting services in Accra', their business shows at the top.

Several small businesses abroad don't engage in mainstream advertisement but in SEO and they have regular customers because whenever someone googles for the kind of services they offer, they appear at the top and the 'googler' checks them out.

It is the time for Ghanaian businesses too since the usage of the internet in Ghana is at an all time high. Take advantage.

Content marketing is one great way to boost a business' SEO.

4. Social Media

I agree that many small and large businesses in Ghana are most likely to have a social media presence. But one challenge for these businesses is how to curate this social media pages.

It is common to see a business start a facebook page or twitter page with much enthusiasm which results in regular posts from the pages but after a while, the enthusiasm fades and the pages are left to 'grow weeds'.

The full potentials of the businesses behind these pages will not be harnessed if social media is run like the way ECG runs electricity in the country.

Maintaining a social media presence requires dedication and I must say some Ghanaian businesses understand the importance of this and as such put much effort into it.

Maintaining a social media presence is like a marital relationship, initially there is much excitement until the positives you thought were present begins to ellude you. Patience and constant updates is what is needed to keep your brand alive socially.

Businesses should make atleast a post everyday so as to keep their brand in the minds of their fans. Too many posts a day will also annoy your fans and so a proper balance must be sought.

The positives of social media are obvious and I would not say anything about that.

5. Brand Personality

The tone of voice of a business can make or umake that business. Despite the importance of brand personality, many small Ghanaian businesses care less about this.

It is important to know how you want your customers to perceive you. Do you want your customers to think of your business as a serious one, a humorous one or an energetic one.

In choosing a brand personality, the sector in which your business falls must be taken into consideration. You don't want your business to be seen as humorous in a banking or finance sector.

Once that personality is chosen, the tone has to cut across all your mediums of communication. And so if the tone of your business is that of humor, it shouldn't happen that on your website and advertisements the business appears serious whereas on social media it is humorous. Potential customers will take your business as a fake and disregard the genuineness of your personality.

So stick to your personality all way out.

Many small businesses in Ghana do not have a personality for their businesses and this deprives them of the benefits of having one. Customers will connect more with the business if the personality of your business is similar to theirs.

For example if your business is a paedriatic clinic, your brand personality might want to be a little less serious since you are dealing with children and parents who are mostly stressed from the role of parenting. To lighten both the children and parents up, a less serious tone will connect more with them. Bear in mind children like fun.

Take another paedriatic clinic whose personality is that of a serious business and it sticks to this. I am pretty sure the parents might not have an issue with this if they do not know another clinic exists that helps them to de-stress with their less serious tone. One thing is for sure, the children will not connect with such a clinic.

So that's all for this article, if you have followed this article from the beginning stay loyal to OpinionGhana.com as there are other interesting articles to read on this platform and many more to come. If you missed the Part I try to have a read of it. Remember to share this with a friend or colleague.

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5 Very Important Things Ghanaian Businesses Take For Granted

Content marketing involves investing time and energy into websites and features such as blogs and FAQ sections. It is becoming common for businesses in Ghana to have websites however these websites are left so dry of content that they were better not in existence. Hardly does one come across a blog or FAQ section on business websites in Ghana.

Take for instance websites of UT bank, RLG, Kasapreko and all the other big businesses in Ghana and you will realize they invest less into content marketing. They either have a newsletter form (which is not taken seriously) or an FAQ section which doesn't serve its intended purpose fully. What is absent is blog sections. Ghanaian businesses just hate blogs.

The primary goal with content marketing is not typically to make a direct sale (although it happens), it is to deliver content over an extended period of time, preferably through email or other means.

The secondary goal is to become a “thought leader” in your industry. The benefits of this is that your content gets you on the radar of larger publications, who will then link to you naturally.

Now let's take RLG for a case study. Assuming RLG had an active blog section on its official website that regularly churns out important articles about the world of technology as it relates to Ghana. After sometime, tech savvy Ghanaians (who have the potential to use RLG products) will begin to visit this blog for news and updates about technology. The more people visit this blog section the higher the chances they would visit other sections of the same website and as people visit sections that explain RLG products, they get interested in what RLG offers and eventually these site visitors become RLG customers.

This is a very low cost marketing strategy which startups especially must adopt since they do not have much financial resources to engage in the very expensive traditional forms of marketing.

Another benefit of the blog section is that, these regular articles that the business produces get crawled by Google and other search engines and kept for future potential customers who may be having their Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT). ZMOT is that point in time when someone decides to look up information, reviews etc. on a particular product the person intends to buy.

What form of advertisement is better than having tech-pundits, bloggers, social commentators among others referencing the blog section of RLG for a particular piece of fact or statement they are using?

The most benefit a business can derive from content marketing in my opinion is trust. The more valuable the information you put out there, the more people (who are potential customers) trust your business and the services or products you offer. These people will consider you an expert in your field of business since you have for a long period satified their information need. They will forever remain loyal customers and will refer many other people to your business.

Note: There are other forms of content marketing that a business can engage in.

2. Email Marketing
Do you know what smart entrepreneurs or businesses do with the traffic they receive from content marketing? They build an email list. Outside of direct sales, there is no better business outcome attached to first-time visitors than when they subscribe to receive newsletters and email updates from your business.

So after all your efforts in content marketing (created a blog section on your website etc.) and you are beginning to see several visitors to your company's website, it will be dumb on the part of the business if it does not collect emails.

I know in Ghana, we are not very good at this email thing. Nevertheless, they are people like me who do everything with our emails (I am sure there is a lot more of us with the popularity of social media).

Email marketing basically involves putting a 'Subscribe to our Newsletter' form on your website and other channels and using the emails you collect as a competitive advantage. If on your site, the 'Subscribe to our Newsletter' should be seen on all pages of the site especially where the blog section is. And make sure it is very conspicuous.

The more the visitors to your blog section, the higher the chances they will subscribe to your newsletter in order not to miss future 'juicy' information.

After collecting all these emails, the business can now be sending regular personalized messages to these potential customers. And trust me, there is a 99% probability they will respond positively to your messages if crafted well than they will do to your facebook page posts which might not even get to them because of facebook's new policy for pages.

People feel privileged to be on the email list of companies they trust and will be glad to share whatever information you send them with friends. In fact, most businesses abroad have had their product launches gone viral because the people on their email list decided to share the next 'coolest' thing with their friends who in turn reshare to their other friends. Wouldn't you wish to be the first to know via email what promotions MTN will be launching in the next couple of days? Wouldn't you, thinking to be very important to MTN and the first to hear such news tell your friends about it? This is how email marketing works.

According to ExactTarget, 50% of online users bought something as a result of an email which is higher than any other marketing channel.

To be continued ...
This article will be continued in the second part (3 remaining points will be talked about). You can visit http://www.opinionghana.com for more interesting and intriguing articles or like the facebook page www.facebook.com/opinionghana for the best articles.

A Year of National Service; A Period of Great Service

It was some few days to September 11, 2012 the day I set off to begin my National Service that I got to know I was posted to a place that sounded familiar. I was posted to Abakrampa Senior High School (aka ABASS) in the Abura-Asebu Kwamankese District Assembly (AAKDA) of the Central Region obviously to teach having graduated with a BSc. in Mathematics and Statistics from the prestigious University of Cape Coast (UCC).

As an alumnus of UCC, I knew of a place called Abura which was close to the university’s campus and so I was very excited to be virtually living around UCC once again. But to my disappointment, after reaching the Regional National Service Secretariat to begin the routine registrations in order to start my service, I got to know the AAKDA district was a little far away from the UCC campus. In fact, it was about a 40 minutes drive from campus. I said to myself at the moment “At least it’s not too far away from the university”. I have grown to love UCC and so once I was in the Central Region, I wanted to be close to it.

So many months passed and as I write this piece, I have some few more days to end my service to the nation. I learned a lot, gained much experience and became a more responsible man in the course of my service. I will share some of my experiences with you as patriotic citizen on duty.

Life as a ‘ruraler’

Abakrampa (aka ABK), the town in which the school is located may be described by others as a village, but I prefer to call it a small town. It is relatively a rural area. ABK is a town I have fallen in love with not because I was served with bush meat frequently as a teacher (I never saw bush meat being sold or eaten) but partly because it was a quiet, peaceful place and also because it was the first time I was coming close to my childhood experiences after leaving my village some 19 years ago.

After several years, I came in contact with people whose only occupation was peasant farming, I saw hunters carry their long guns on their shoulders, saw women and children bath outside at night among others. I also felt the impact of the chieftaincy institution once again. These are scenes that left an impression on me.

ABK is a small town, so small when you start walking from one end of the town, you will reach the other end in about 5 minutes (I may be exaggerating). Not so many business activities went on in this small town yet there were about 10 places you could buy phone credits. There were 3 chemical shops, a mosque, about 5 churches, one real chop bar and about 4 ‘blue kiosks’.

As an outsider, you could not get the food of your liking especially in the evenings. Those you will get were also short of taste standards. You had to train yourself to eat kenkey (Fante or Ga type), ‘etiwu’ or be your own cook. This was frustrating for me when I first arrived but I quickly adjusted to the situation.

Due to the town’s small nature, an indigene could easily identify you as a teacher even when you are not tucked in. They loved to call teachers ‘Tee’ and will mostly greet you even when the one greeting is far older.

One thing I did not like much was meeting my students in town whenever I left my room. As a young person, my appearance at home made me look just like them and I thought it funny for a teacher and student to be wearing pair of shorts with some ‘chalewote’ at a kenkey joint. Interestingly, I was so close to my students, they made me feel like one of them whenever I met them in town.

Life as a Teacher

I don’t admire the teaching profession much but I do love teaching. I love to profess knowledge concerning a particular subject or topic and so I was honoured to be selected to teach my area of expertise, Mathematics. A subject most students dread yet the single most important subject on this earth (you are allowed to disagree if whatever subject you have in mind does not include Maths).

I was assigned to Form 2 General Arts 1 and Form 2 General Arts 2 and later Form 1 Home Economics. Clearly, these are not classes which like to learn Maths yet I took up the challenge.

There were times when students supposedly grasped a particular topic completely yet when a class test was conducted, the modal score was below average. It was disheartening in these situations as it looked like you did not do a good job even when during the lessons they appeared to have understood all that you taught and could answer questions you posed to them.

I fell in ‘love’ with my students despite their poor performance sometimes, which was understandable as it had become clear to me, they had a poor foundation having attended rural government schools. Whenever school went on recess, I was wishing for a quick resume to meet them once again.

My greatest teaching experience was handling the Form 1 Home Economics class. This was a class of about 90 students who were all females and most of them unwilling to understand Maths. They brought out the patience in me. What I would have caned students in the senior classes for, I allowed it to pass in this class. All this, I did in order that I don’t scare them the more and also, so I will be able to fix their shaky foundation in Mathematics.

In all the classes I taught I always favoured the girls, something I hated my teachers for. I don’t really know why I favour them but it maybe because I now understand the challenges they (girls) face. I learnt a lesson, never judge people until you have been in their shoes.

Did I mention my students nicknamed me? The culprits were all in my senior classes. Some called me Modulo, apparently because it was the first topic I taught them whilst others called me Suhum because I mentioned to them I attended the great Suhum Senior High and Technical School aka Sutesco. I took no offence since we (personally I never engaged in nicknaming my teachers) used to call our teachers names. I remember one of my teachers in Sutesco was called Celine Dion because he talked slowly and softly. Again, I learnt another lesson, what goes round comes around.

My interaction with the permanent staff was healthy. I respected them a great deal. Some of them really love the work they do. My opinion that nobody wants to be a teacher was changed overhere as some exhibited serious commitment to their profession. I will miss them a lot but one thing I will miss most is the daily dose of political debates at the Staff Common Room.

The school had a really disciplined headmaster. Sometimes, I rather wanted to call him a ‘difficult’ headmaster because of his actions. He had a vision for the school and he was hell bent on achieving them. The visions were largely good but in carrying them out he sometimes fell out with some of his staff. I will remember him for his bold and strong stand on issues. I remember once I led my colleague national service persons to his office to negotiate better motivations. (Motivation is some money incentive teachers receive from the school every term). He never seemed to have agreed to my submissions yet he carried out our suggestions. It came as a surprise and we were grateful to him for that. He, Rev. E.D. Kamasa (the headmaster) became a Dr. in the course of my stay thus adding one more title to his name.

My memories of my colleague service persons will be profound. We were a happy family of five. Three Mathematicians (Ebenezer, Eric and myself), a Music teacher (my roommate, Joseph) and a Reverend (Mr. Buabeng). We stuck to each other in the course of our stay and I am sure we will forever remember one another wherever we find ourselves.

It was a great experience for me to have served my country as a core Mathematics Teacher. It is not all hell and suffering for National Service Persons. Sometimes, it is up to you to love what you do.

God bless our homeland Ghana.

National Service Traffic Module will Serve us Good

In Ghana, the introduction of new policies and interventions almost always comes with a lot of public criticism and partial scrutiny alongside the political bantering. Mention can be made of the introduction of the Talk Tax, the Toll Booth Levy, the National Service Agric module among others. Maybe, we borrowed this conservative attitude from our colonial masters, the British. We are not ready for change until the change itself has taken effect.

We woke up one morning to the news of an introduction of a Traffic direction module by the National Service Scheme (NSS) and once again this seemingly good and harmless initiative was greeted with scorn and unpreparedness. The debate continued until the political actors interfered for fear of a political ramification and sacked the NSS boss.

Had we taken sometime to be humble as our Ghanaian backgrounds teach us and not be elite in our approaches to our problems as a nation, we might have seen the sense in the traffic module.

Some have said, why should our graduates finish school only to come and stand under the sun to direct traffic after spending huge sums of money on their tertiary education. To me, this is a trait of eliteness. Just for the sake of a first degree or HND we have acquired, we feel big enough to become a traffic warden for a year?

This is the attitude that has deepened the unemployment situation in the country. Our graduates will not do any job aside being in an air conditioned office with a suit and tie. As a people, we have forced our graduates into thinking they are super beings just for the sake of their tertiary education.

As a National Service Person, we are obliged to serve our motherland in any capacity the country deems fit and if the nation thinks being a traffic warden to control our streets and reduce the carnages on the roads is what is appropriate, why the hue and cry.

The traffic module will give service personnel at least two opportunities; to be patriotic and humble and use the rich experience acquired in the classroom to reduce the accidents on our roads. Let’s remember a similar traffic module in Egypt under their national service scheme involves graduates. In developed countries, people with more degrees do similar jobs.

A graduate is not over qualified for a job as a traffic warden. In fact even in Ghana, those who direct the traffic are policemen with years of experience who happen to be our fathers and mothers. Are we saying by virtue of our certificates, we are more wiser and better than our parents to be on the road? And it is not like this job is so disgraceful because these same graduates when recruited as policemen will willingly direct traffic on our roads.

Interestingly, as a national service person, there are no pay disparities between being a traffic warden, a teacher or an office assistant in our public institutions. Should we allow our graduates to direct traffic, the nation will be teaching these graduates to be patriotic and appreciate any lawful job so far as it benefits the nation.

Again, there is the question of the service persons being inexperienced. When this came up, the NSS boss by then appropriately responded by saying the persons posted to direct traffic will be duely trained as traffic wardens. This is an opportunity for these graduates to learn the job of a traffic warden and carry it into the future when they have their own cars on the roads.

Another issue with this module is the question of why the NSS will introduce this module when it fails to meet the demands of private institutions. It is true posting a person to the private sector will benefit the individual and the institution financially however the nation will be at the losing end. The monthly allowances given to service persons is to help the nation save some money and so if we end up sending these service persons to private institutions, in effect we are helping the private institution to save money at the expense of the government. And so priority is always given to the public sector.

Whiles people express all these reservations about this traffic module, our roads are in dire need of traffic wardens and due to the unavailability of traffic lights on some of our roads, accident cases are increasing. The MTTU is also under staffed to assign people to these roads. So the question becomes, what do we do in this circumstance? If desperate situations call for desperate measures, I see no wrong in allowing our fresh graduates to help the country in these desperate times by serving as traffic wardens on our roads.

God bless our Homeland Ghana.