Akiwa herbstein - 7/3/00

Interview took place at the Akuaba offices and factory.  This property is on about one half acre of land.  The structures include a set of offices, a showroom and a large three building factory workshop.

AH Dearth of skill and management. The west is benefiting from the brain drainGhana, and has an advantage.  I can count the Ken's on my fingers.  Markets: mostly internal to 
although she sold in Dallas.

Started company in 1971 after coming back from Glascow, manufacturing wooden toys, one of largest in Africa. As time went on, she couldn't compete with mechanized toys. " I was too busy" to change the products and didn't have the flexibility to retool (she purchased the equipment early on and it can make all types of products). To compete with Fischer_Price, we needed more capital.  First phase was toys, and at the end, the exchange rate became problematic. then diversified too wood furniture, and based on a foundation she was exposed to building wood doors, she decided to get into real estate. Toys to home furnishings to office furniture to real estate. Next move is financing, and she is looking to raise $1 million. Financing will be used for the housing. 50% down and rest paid over course of a year.  She has 64 houses in the Mag........ Estates, where she had to put in roads, water, sewage.  But only 10 have sold in 3 years. "There is no long term money available for investment.  Ghanians are short term."  She thinks she is the only one. But she has a team studying the feasibility of financing.


She is not a miller, but she tells them the kinds of species that her company needs, and she can use the secondary species. {We asked her about Wellington Biaden who is a large tree producer in WAEN, but she din't know him.]

She wants to source from external services, equipment such as ditch diggers for roads and infrastructure, but financial situation is a problem. No problem with tariffs and duties. " We can take care of that."  At customs, they ask for tariffs, but we can deal with it.  This contrasts with sending trucks of product to Senegal but the paper work and hassles were difficult. Governments can borrow, but we entrepreneurs can't borrow, because of guarantees.    Ken is looking for funds-the West Africa funds. SNITT has money. SIC also has funds, but accessing either is difficult. 

Her company is organizing itself to go public, but will spend the next year getting the management and statements in order to do so. The company is producing its own web page, and should have gone outside to have it constructed because they had found things to change and have spent too much time on deals. The problem with her company is that they haven't spent enough time on marketing, but rather have been occupied with production problems. Also she later mentioned that she does all the designs, but the implied that they do need to modernize and upgrade them.

Her husband is white South Africa, and she is Ashanti from central Ghana. Her mother is a goat farmer. She studied economics at Legion, worked for a bank (?) before starting her own company. Her husband joined the business as of last year. She has a son who graduated from Brown in economics and she has been to the US twice. She would love to go to North Carolina to see the furniture companies.

WAEN: Has it helped her? Not really much assistance. At meetings they talk about problems with financing, but if we want to assist our members, we should do it with loans like in Kenya.   When asked about other oganizations assisting entrepreneurs, she mentioned AGFI, which maintains a list of women entrepreneurs and the private Enterprise Foundation.  Andrew Quayson she mentioned as the eexc. Secretary of AGI.  .  Kofi Kludjeson is the president of AGI and is a sales agent for HP and has a cellular phone business.  ?? Abiasi is the ehad of PEF