The Suame Magazine Industrial Development Organization (SMIDO), an umbrella organization and development wing of Suame Magazine has expressed appreciation and embraced the offer made by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to provide $24million to support Suame Magazine. The offer was disclosed by the Director-General of UNIDO, Dr.Kandeh Yumkella, when he paid a courtesy call on President J.A Kufour at the Castle, Osu.

In an interview, the consultant to SMIDO, Mr. Nyaaba-Aweeba Azongo, told B&FT that the expectations of SMIDO in the wake of the UNIDO facility, among the immediate priorities would be the institutional and entrepreneurship capacity building of artisans, setting up of Common Facility Centres and particularly the establishment of the Suame Tech Automatics Engineering Institute (STAEI Project), as well as the Industrial Village Project through which SMIDO has successfully negotiated for a 1000 acre land.

Mr.Azongo, expressed some reservations which he hoped would inform the project scope. He said, they were not discounting the fact that they had been greatly inspired by UNIDO?s gesture, but were cautious not to prejudge its outcome since its mode of management and dispensation is yet to be unveiled before the artisans who are the primary beneficiaries. ? Development is a complex exercise, financial flows and investments are important, but intervention success is decisively dependent on the mode, contextual efficacy and comprehensiveness of the conceptual framework designed and adopted to underpin its planning, management and utilization,? he stressed. Mr Azongo further stated the prevalence towards conventional centralised command structures for implementation has not been groundbreaking enough to challenge sustainable poverty eradication. He said, he believed there would be sufficient scope in the current facility to accommodate an appropriate blend of institutional development and the physical component development. ? I believe if these primary development issues are well-rehearsed the UNIDO intervention, project will emerge as the best showpiece of sustainable development and poverty eradication through wealth creation in Ghana,? Mr Azongo predicted.

The President of SMIDO, Mr. George Asamoah Amankwa, said they had been able to mobilise enough strength and would ensure effective participation in this industrialisation process under the UNIDO?s facility to ensure ownership of the process towards sustainable development.

The President, said they were conveying their gratitude to UNIDO, the Government of Ghana, the Millennium Cities Initiative and all the stakeholders who have played diverse roles to ensure the provision of this facility. Mr Asamoah Amankwah said the facility would be utilised in ways and on such terms that would ensure the realisation of the ultimate goal of turning Suame Magazine into a technologically advanced industrial estate. Mr. George Asamoah Amankwa called upon all the artisanal groups in the country to identify themselves with SMIDO in order to benefit from the development expertise and policies of SMIDO to champion a common cause for artisans in the country.