New Haven software company’s workers live in Ghana

A leather rug woven from many pieces hangs on the wall of a software-development company in New Haven.

It’s one of the few signs that the company’s executives come from Ghana.

Welcome to AQ Solutions, a 4-year-old marriage of African ingenuity and American capital.

Most of the company’s employees work out of Accra, the capital of Ghana, developing computer software for companies in the United States.

More and more U.S. companies are outsourcing information-technology work to Third World countries with highly educated workforces and low wage rates.

"Companies can’t always hire $100-an-hour workers. This is part of the solution," said company founder and President Awo Quaison-Sackey.

Quaison-Sackey, the daughter of Ghana’s ambassador to the United Nations in the 1960s, attended elementary school in New Rochelle, N.Y. She returned to the United States in 1975 as a graduate student and became a U.S. citizen in 1991.

AQ Solutions employs half a dozen people in Connecticut who market the company’s out-sourcing services to potential U.S. clients. The company’s customers include General Electric and Northeast Utilities.

"We picked it up to increase our investment in minority (owned) firms and to get a better understanding of offshore software development," said Joseph Aivano, director of application development at Northeast Utilities in Berlin, Conn. "AQ Solutions was more of a pilot test. The test was successful."

Aivano said NU is now considering outsourcing jobs to India, China and Ireland, as well.

Quaison-Sackey said the average wage in Ghana is $1.25 an hour, or $200 a month, for information technology workers.

"We pay them almost double the prevailing wage," she said, an average $2.50 a hour, or $400 a month.

That’s a princely sum in Ghana, where the minimum wage is 76 cents a day.

"To put that in perspective, the price of a gallon of gasoline is $2.33," she said.

Quaison-Sackey started AQ Solutions because she wanted to help bring jobs to her native Ghana.

"In Ghana, people are poor," said Quaison-Sackey.

Since the company’s mission fits with the goals of the Ghanaian government, the government has agreed to loosen certain restrictions on foreign investment and technologies to allow companies such as AQ Solutions to operate. The government also kicked in some tax breaks.

"Information technology is the fastest-growing industry (in Ghana)," said Edward Ansa, a team leader at AQ Solutions.

"The government is trying to move the focus from traditional exports like cocoa, coffee and gold."

For AQ Solutions’ 30 programmers in Ghana, the jobs are a dream come true, Quaison-Sackey said. She said she hopes to build a workforce 500 strong in Ghana by 2005.

"If India can do it, so can we," she said.

India has a decade-long track record in information-technology outsourcing.

Quaison-Sackey said she also plans to pitch her company as a subcontractor to larger Indian companies handling software development for American companies.

Quaison-Sackey said some of the challenges of overseas outsourcing include long distances, major time differences and a lack of personal contact.

She said she flies her Ghanaian managers to the United States to meet clients and lets clients phone the programmers in Ghana directly.

"There are no barriers," she beamed.