THE immediate past Vice-President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) and Chief Executive Officer of SAMBA Foods, Mrs Leticia Osafo-Addo, has been adjudged the overall winner of the 2009 edition of ‘Builders of the African Economy’ prize in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
She became the first Ghanaian to win the award, joining the likes of Sudanese business mogul, Dr Mo Ibrahim, Globacom’s Chief Executive, Dr Mike Adenuga Jnr, a former Chief Executive Officer of the MTN Group, Phuthuma Nhleko, and Malian-born Cheick Modibo Diarra, the current chairman of Microsoft Africa.
The annual award, instituted in 2006 by Colombe Marketing and Communications, an Abidjan-based communications and advertising consultancy company, is an event which celebrates excellence and contributions made by Africa’s top businessmen and women in their chosen fields aimed at improving their economies.
This year’s edition also saw the organisers profiling personalities, institutions, businesses and their owners, as well as award winners in English and French magazines.
The new addition, according to the organising committee, was to promote African businesses beyond the borders of the continent.
The award, which was in recognition of Mrs Osafo-Addo’s continuous promotion of agri-business and food packaging to meet international acceptance, according to the committee, was a test case for small and medium-scale enterprises across the continent.
Mr Russel Lohore, a panel judge on the committee, indicated that agri-business under the small and medium enterprises on the continent had not grown to the levels expected owing to inadequate support from financial institutions, which had led to the closure of several firms whose owners had now turned to trade and commerce.
He said the case of SAMBA Foods went to reiterate a point that investing in the sector would enhance African countries’ desire to achieve a middle-income status.
Mrs Osafo-Addo, sharing her thoughts on the award with the Daily Graphic, challenged policy makers to develop clear policies and programmes that would boost agri-businesses in the country.
SAMBA, according to her, started as a micro initiative and had grown into a medium-scale enterprise, adding, “This is a clear case that if enough support is extended to small-scale enterprises, the country will make major in-roads towards the attainment of the middle-income status.
She expressed regret that successive governments had paid lip service to the sector, although the AGI and its stakeholders had, in the past, advocated that policy makers should identify measures which they would use to develop the country.
Mrs Osafo-Addo, who has in the past won the Danish Concept Award for SME Development, was also a winner of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIMG) award in 2001, as well as the coveted African Business Woman of the Year award in 2005, the Dutch Fellowship Award for quality assurance in the Food Processing Enterprise in The Netherlands, among several other international awards.
The award winner, who is referred to as ‘Auntie Samba’ by most people, has also featured in business advocacy programmes in several media aimed at promoting agri-business and entrepreneurial development among the youth.
Mrs Osafo-Addo appealed to the government to provide regulations at the macro level that would motivate financial institutions which are major financiers of business projects to develop better relationships with the SMEs in complementing government’s efforts towards the country’s development.
Mrs Osafo-Addo holds a Master of Business Administration in Management Technology and Innovation from the Wangeningen Agricultural University in The Netherlands.
She also holds a Diploma in Assurance and Marketing in Food Processing from the same university.
The one-time board member of the Social Investment Fund currently serves as a member of the Advisory Panel of the African Guarantee Fund, the African Development Bank (AFDB) and the International Finance Corporation based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Mrs Osafo-Addo, a former student of Technology Secondary School, now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) SHS, has over the years mentored young women in tertiary institutions and training colleges across the country in food processing and preservation.
She was not happy about the lack of finance, inadequate managerial skills and the lack of ready market for locally made products that continued to impede the growth of local industries.
She also expressed disappointment at the fact that although successive administrations preached the gospel of private-public sector partnership in the economy, the same entities were doing very little to rescue agro-based companies that ran into problems.
The SAMBA CEO noted that the resuscitation of her factory from a long slumber should serve as a test case for small-scale businesses and challenged managers of such entities to stand firm as they made efforts to promote the development of agri-business.
She also called for an intervention by the Ghana Standards Board, the Food and Drugs Board, the Food Science Department of the universities and other stakeholders in order to make black pepper (Shito) a national product that could be identified with Ghana when it was mentioned, just as Mercedes Benz is linked to Germany.
She paid tribute to her staff, whose encouragement and willing attributes, she said had contributed to the company’s success since its resuscitation and dedicated the award to the several women who had dominated the SME sector in the informal economy.
She said the award would be presented to the First Lady, Mrs Ernestina Naadu Mills, hoping that it would serve as a motivation for other women entrepreneurs.
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