A Day Spent at the iLEAD Summit

Part 2.

Speaker-Esi Yankah CEO of TICKLZ N GIGGL.

As very young as it is she wrote a book "waaaaait a minute"

within a month. Wow that was inspiring and i have also just started mine and to

beat her record. She encourage us to always get right inspirations as having

hers from God. I must have a purpose- add to something or someone positively.

In her quest to mentoring people she is about to launch her own television show

talking about pregnancy.

Continuing talking to us she said we must not be afraid of starting small,

don't get intimidated that we are young, don't be afraid of taking risk, and

don't be afraid of failure, we must not be afraid of being laughed at and let

them know that your faith is in God. WATCH ME DO IT.

Interacting with participants, she answered a question about how we can deal

with people who steal our ideas. Sharing her experience with us when she sent

an idea to a company for sponsorship and the marketing manager started pursuing

her idea she took the bold step to confront the CEO about how his company was

destroying her dreams. So in these

instances we need to confront superior to those who want to tarnish and destroy

our dreams. An advice from a participant was when you sent proposal you need to

get it stamp for evidence and also one best way to seek for sponsorship is

through partnership with the company where they also end up gaining something

from the program/event.

Next speaker, Franklin Cudjoe the Executive Director of Imani Ghana also

couldn't hide the great inspiration she had from Ms Yankah's talk and her

innovation of doing a television show about pregnancy to create awareness.

Speaking about the theme; the African Cheetah and the Renaissance which was

used by Thabo Mbeki and others when they founded their renaissance political

parties denoting the rebirth of Africa. Telling about how entrepreneurship can

help us, we need to take opportunities and solve them as problems.

Also speaking on innovations, it is

young people who are making other now. Citing an example of Bright Simons of

Imani Ghana, of about 30 years who invented the M-pedigree software which can

be used to identify fake and counterfeit drugs. They have sold the codes To

genuine manufacturers. So many countries such as Nigeria, who has the highest

number of fake drugs on sale, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya and even Asian countries

have sign up to use this innovation to solve drug problems. But the question is

when Ghana is also going to sign up to this locally manufactured innovation.

Also sharing his personal life story to motivate us he shared the experiences

he had at IEA being his only job in Ghana before he left the country. IEA does

researches which are very voluminous even for people whom the research concerns

to read. So he decided that if he can put these voluminous researches into a

1000 words article, it will still end up explaining and addressing the same

issue. He then started writing

world street journal which publish his articles and had

several kudos from readers.

Next speaking was Mr. Pierre Brunache Jr. West Africa Regional director of the

African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership.

Before starting his talk, he ask everyone to write what he/she would like to

become in future. Being an entrepreneur and into agribusiness he spoke on the

theme: OPPORTUNITIES FOR AFRICAN YOUTHS IN AGRIBUSINESS. Doing some statistics,

Ghana imports about 70% of rice which is worth $450 million and produces only

30%. For us young people to take up opportunities we must know about and have knowledge

about:

1. Fertilizer and Seeds.

Everything we put into the stomach was from the soil.

We need to educate illiterate farmers about what they need to do about their

farms, ie, size of their farms, fertilizers they need to apply for their crops

to grow properly.

2. Create a farm advisory service to work with farm base organisations.

3. Farm sanitation is also very important to have notice of.

4. Equipment manufacturers

5. Agricultural calendar.

Taking reference from the Africa

business report, Ghana's Accra has being rated as one of the top most visited

city for 2013. And giving testimonies to that about the presence of the second

richest man's son visit to Ghana and also about when the mother was about to

pass on the only country she chose was Ghana, in the northern region. So as

young people we must think of how we can start solving our problems for us to

get that world class recognition but not where people will take pictures of

slums in the country and use them to create wrong impressions about our

country. We need to be very innovative. And they other ways of getting involve

in agribusiness is through wholesaling and retailing. If one does not want to

get direct into the farm work, then you can opt for agribusiness contract. We

as youths must get to have network with influential and affluent people in

society. He also introduce us to read the book; How rich countries get

Rich and poor countries stay poor.

He also asked of us to identify our target market, research about them.

He was also concern about women empowerment saying "ones you empower women

of Africa you change Africa".

Concluding his speech he asked and encouraging us, we need to do the following

1. Select an agribusiness sector.eg.

Cashew, vegetables, etc.

2. Design a value added action plan.

3. Seek an advice from an agribusiness mentor.

After this session there was an emergency aptitude test.

Watch out for part 3.

Thank You.

Akpah Prince.

akpahprince.wordpress.com