The National Democratic Congress’s UK and Ireland chapter, which is one of the strongest overseas chapters of the NDC, has made a bold initiative by launching an Obama-style funding campaign platform in London.

The platform - www.ndc2016.org - has undergone serious scrutiny by key players in the NDC-UK and has had the endorsement of the party executives in the UK.

According to the Chairman of NDC-UK & Ireland, Mr Kofi Kwakye, this initiative has been in the pipeline since 2015 and has undergone consultations among the members and executive teams in the UK and at national level in Ghana.

A brief presentation was done by the Founder and Chairman of ActionGhana, Mr Douglas Oppong and Chief Operating Officer of ActionGhana, Mr Sam Nyedu Addo, in the presence of party General Secretary Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur and Ghana High Commissioner Mr Victor Smith.

At the presentation, Mr Addo said that, the company is doing all it can to bring the concept of crowdfunding and online donations to Ghana and Africa.

“We are proud to be one of the leading alternative funding and crowdfunding companies in the world. As a Ghanaian, we have created Actionghana.com to launch the ideas of crowdfunding of projects and businesses as a complimentary service to banks and microfinance companies”.

Vice Chairman of NDC-UK & Ireland Chapter, Mr Joe Owusu-Agyemang who has been a staunch supporter of the platform, said that “with the November elections almost upon us, it is important for the NDC to reach out to its overseas members to help raise funds for the presidential and constituency campaigns.

According to him, the election will be fought and won bottom-up.

It is therefore important to target certain constituencies that are struggling financially. Using the platform, donors can target constituencies and donate directly to those particular constituencies.”

According to Mr Addo, a mobile application is being developed to make it easy to reach out to the wider diaspora audience in the UK, Europe, USA and mainland Ghana. This will enable anyone with a smart phone to donate to projects on the ActionGhana platform as well as to any political party of their choice. In the meantime donations to projects or to a party must be done via the website. He also said that the company is looking at replicating this platform in other African countries.

NDC-UK & Ireland is launching their campaign funding platform on 1 July 2016 in London.

For more information on the launch and to donate to the party, simply go to www.ndc2016.org or visit their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Ndc2016org). To donate to any project please visit the main ActionGhana website http://www.actionghana.com.