Accra, March 31, GNA=96Mr Moses Anibaba, British Council
Director for Ghana, has expressed confidence in the country's
creative industry saying it had the potential to meet demand for
quality and innovation production in the television and film
industry. Though the creative industry, particularly the television and
film industry, had badly been criticised recently for profanity,
pornography and poor quality programmes, Mr Anibaba insisted
that quality training and monitoring would push talented
entrepreneurs to unleash their potentials. He was speaking at the graduation ceremony for the Fourth
Creative Enterprise Training Programme co-organised by British
Council (BC) and the University of Ghana Business School
(UGBS) in Accra on Thursday. Mr Anibaba described Ghana as a country endowed with
many talented people in the creative industry and recommended
that capacity building and skill-honing programmes was needed
to mentor the citizenry for national development. "Ghanaians are very talented=85People are looking for quality
and innovation in the film industry and Ghana has the potential to
meet the expectation", he said. Mr Anibaba expressed hope that the graduands would
practice the things they had learnt to create a difference in the
creative industry. The Creative Enterprise training programme is the initiative of
BC and UGBS which began in 2009 with the aim of providing
managerial and entrepreneurial skills for persons in the creative
sector. The UGBS created the Enterprise Development Services
(EDS) to provide consultation, training and mentorship
programmes for players in the Small and Medium scale
Enterprises (SMEs) and personnel in the creative industry to
grow their businesses. Mrs Majorie Beeko, EDS Business Development Manager of
UGBS, said the four-week training programme had equipped the
graduands with the ability to protect their intellectual property,
business contracts and had exposed them to negotiating and
networking skills and the Ghana's business regulatory framework
as well. She expressed confidence that the modules on business
planning, costing and pricing, basic knowledge in financing and
business management would equip graduands to excel in their
fields of endeavours. Mrs Beeko said, 93a little effort and investment in honing
business skills can translate into huge financial successes. At
EDS, we maintain that entrepreneurial education is no use of
itself, unless it adds value to the entrepreneur's competence and
by extension growth to his firm." In a speech read on his behalf, Mr Johnson Adasi, Director of
SMEs at the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI), called for
effective Public Private Partnership as a tool to address
challenges facing entrepreneurs. "There is also the need for attitudinal change on the part of
Ghanaian SME operators and conscious efforts should be made
to have the vision to grow their enterprises and not to be satisfied
with marginal growth." Mr Christian Adusu-Donkor, a graduate of the Fourth Class,
appealed to the MOTI and stakeholders to encourage young
entrepreneurs to stay in business. He told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the training
programme had offered him the ability to cost his services in a
more scientific and efficient way. Mr Cyril Akonor, a graduand and Creative Designer for Big
Ideaz Consult, a private firm, told GNA that he had learnt how to
improve on personal branding to carve out a niche in the creative
industry. He was grateful to the managements of BC and UGBS for the
programme. Thirteen people formed the Fourth Class of graduates out of
the 73 students so far trained through the UGBS and BC
collaboration. Enterprises under the creative industry include media,
television, advertising, software computer games, multimedia
production, film and theatre, music, visual and performing arts,
fashion design and publishing.
