Successive governments over the years have mostly touted the private sector as the primary panacea to Ghana’s economic development.

Thus, several policy proposals have been put forward by different public policymakers and government agencies with specific emphasis on supporting local businesses to thrive and possibly even grow beyond our borders.

However, over the years precious little of these laudable proposals have seen any form of implementation as politicians have lacked the will to make good their promises.

This situation coupled with the very tough economic climate in the country at the moment has created a very unfriendly business climate for all companies operating in Ghana. However, the challenges are obviously direr for local businesses with no foreign support to fall on in such tumultuous times.

This fact is backed by local and foreign indices that measure the business climate of Ghana. For instance, both the AGI’s Business Barometer index for the last quarter of 2015 and the World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2016 indicated significant declines pointing to the current economic malaise we find ourselves in.’

Clearly, this unfortunate phenomenon cannot continue unabated. It is crucial for all well-meaning Ghanaians and crucial players in the economic and policy space to prioritize this important issue for special attention. It is in this spirit that IMANI is pleased to announce its flagship advocacy campaign to push our politicians to finally come good on their promises to promote local content and muster the political will to implement the laudable existing policies meant to promote the growth of our local businesses.

MODUS OPERANDI

Our approach to this campaign will not merely focus on policy makers, instead we hope to affect the overall consciousness of Ghanaians to better appreciate the necessity of such policies and call for their implementation.

To achieve this, IMANI will partner businesses-sector organizations and other civil society players to undertake well-curated documentaries which will expose the current state of our local businesses across all the key industries and sectors. These revealing documentaries will also seek to assess all the different policies that have been drafted over the last two decades and the state of implementation of same.

Crucially, the documentaries will also review the impact of non-implementation of these policies on our local businesses and what necessary steps can be adopted in arresting the current decline. The documentaries will air on a number of partner TV networks across the country and will also be syndicated widely on different social media platforms.

SUPPORT FOR THIS CAMPAIGN

We would like to use this opportunity to invite all well-meaning Ghanaians, local and foreign organizations, as well as the diplomatic community to support this important exercise.

We would like to acknowledge the support of the management of Cocobod, who have supported IMANI with Twenty Thousand Ghana Cedis for its 2016 activities. The funds will be allocated for this campaign in our quest to get our politicians to make more deliberate efforts towards supporting local businesses.