Caption: (L-R). Dr. Sam Akor, Deputy Rector, MountCrest University College, Ms. Catherine Afeku, Advisor, Strategic Communication, NCO (AfCFTA), Dr. Fareed Kwesi Arthur, Coordinator, NCO (AfCFTA) and Ms. Irene Ansa-Asare, Rector, MountCrest.
MountCrest University College and the National Coordination Office (NCO) of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) have initiated a partnership to facilitate research, information-sharing and training of Ghanaian stakeholders in African continental trade.
The collaboration of the two institutions, among other things, aims at deepening the people’s understanding of trade processes and practices, the operations and activities of AfCFTA as well as the legal implications of their actions and inaction as players in continental trade.
Programmes under the partnership will be designed and run by the NCO and MountCrest, which will coordinate all the training sessions and present certificates to participants.
Facilitators will be drawn from the National Coordination Office of AfCFTA, MountCrest, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London, the Trade and Industry Ministry and other relevant institutions.
At a meeting in Accra to cement the partnership and outline its activities, the National Coordinator and Senior Technical Advisor at the National AfCFTA Coordination Office of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Dr. Fareed Kwesi Arthur stressed that AfCFTA had come to stay, “And we will not wait for mushroom groups to take over the training of people involved in trade on the continent”.
“For us at the NCO, we will continually collaborate with experts to train our people in order to deepen Ghana’s penetration into African markets and also increase trade between Ghanaian entrepreneurs and the rest of Africa,” he pointed out.
The National Coordinator said the NCO has a broad spectrum of targets in the public and private sectors and added that there are a lot of public sector players who do not know much about what is happening at AfCFTA and thus need a different set of knowledge to be able to help mainstream AfCFTA into government policy.
He stressed that the government agencies in the regions, particularly the new ones, must know how to integrate the AfCFTA agenda into government policies, however, they may not have to come to Accra to learn how to do that. Therefore, capacity building programmes must be taken to them. That, he said, calls for the training of trainers who will go out there and impart knowledge to the people.
Again, within the public sector, he said, there is the need to look at the different knowledge demands and meet them at all times.
For the private sector, Dr. Arthur observed that the knowledge demand can be very complicated because there are different entrepreneurs and people in the business community, who need to know about AfCFTA and the opportunities it offers. There are also others who just want to know what AfCFTA is about, and to such people the message must be right and timely.
“Again, the small scale enterprises may also require entrepreneurial skills to effectively and efficiently manage their businesses. The SMEs must, therefore, develop the culture of working together in order to have better control of the market, the National Coordinator noted.
He said producers of goods and services, traders, warehousing companies etc., need different knowledge and information about AfCFTA, and within the same private sector, academic institutions also need knowledge about AfCFTA for research and growth purposes, hence the importance of the MountCrest and NCO partnership.
Dr. Arthur observed that during a recent NCO Market Expansion Programme, which was aimed at identifying Ghanaian companies that could trade under AfCFTA, it was discovered that Ghana has three categories of companies; those that trade all over the African continent, the group that trades with selected countries in Asia, Europe, America etc., and the third group that purports not to produce for export, but their products are found all over the African continent.
In view of this, he said, there is the need to research into the activities of the various groups and work with all of them to intentionally aim for the African market. There is also the need to help them with market research to enable them to find out the tastes and consumer behaviour in the various countries in order to satisfy them.
He stated that if companies decide to go to the African market they must have the requisite knowledge to be able to prepare for that market because they have to protect their investments. So pre-investment considerations must be backed by vital data.
“This is why the collaboration with MountCrest is very important,” Dr. Arthur reiterated.
The Rector of MountCrest, Ms. Irene Ansa-Asare expressed her gratitude to the leadership of the NCO for the opportunity to work with them and the other relevant institutions to complement the efforts of AfCFTA to provide comprehensive and mutually beneficial data-based knowledge that will help deepen the economic integration of Africa.
“Services provided by MountCrest are delivered by international and domestic consultants who have done it before so there is no repetition of mistakes. We work with experts who have advised European and Asian countries etc.”
“Our team members are not just drawn from MountCrest but also from several other academic and professional institutions, so now that there is consensus, we are moving up to the technical level and clearly get the targets to determine the nature of the programmes that we will design,” Ms. Ansa-Asare said.
The Deputy Rector of MountCrest, Dr. Sam Akor assured NCO (AfCFTA) of world-class services by MountCrest and its team of consultants.
The Strategic Communications Advisor at the National (AfCFTA) Coordination Office, Ms. Catherine Afeku said the steps taken by MountCrest and NCO to collaborate and develop knowledge-building and information-sharing programmes for the masses who are literally hungry for understanding and information about AfCFTA were timely and very important.
“People need to know that the NCO is an avenue to get information about the protocols, the rules of origin, the tariff systems and everything about AfCFTA,” Ms. Afeku said. She added that the NCO also focuses on gender-based sensitization to equip women with the requisite knowledge on trade because many of them cross the borders frequently to do business and thus need to appreciate basic accounting practices, tax regimes and the legal systems, among other things, in the various countries that they visit to trade.