Shopping mall trend continues to grow in Ghana

This article was published on the website www.howwemadeitinafrica.com on 10th September, 2013

A few years ago, shopping in Ghana meant boarding a bus to the city centre and wading through crowds of people into an open market to bargain for items. This practice still continues, but a different retail phenomenon is attracting shoppers away from open markets.
 

Marina Mall in Accra, Ghana’s capital

Ghanaian capital Accra’s retail shopping scene has been changing with the development of formal, Western-style malls that also serve as popular hangouts and meeting places, especially on weekends and holidays.

Accra Mall which opened in 2008 with a 21,000m² capacity, attracts an astonishing 135,000 visitors a week, according to Actis, the UK-based property investor which financed the development. South Africa’s Shoprite and Game are the anchor tenants and the mall boasts a one stop shop concept where almost all purchases can be made under one roof.

There are several reasons for this growth in retail property, most notably the 2007 discovery of oil in Ghana and its subsequent production. The country’s economy grew a whopping 14% in 2011, 8% in 2012 and is projected to grow 7.8% in 2013.

Moses Luri, head of retail leasing at Broll Ghana, property manager of both Accra Mall and A&C Mall in the east of the city, explains the growth of shopping malls.




“We have favourable economic conditions here. A growing middle class with disposable income, so now people are actually able to afford some of the brands that they are used to outside the country, or even afford their basic necessities,” he says, adding that people also want to shop in a modern environment.
Last year Marina Mall was opened. It is located in the Airport City area, a multi-purpose shopping and office hub mostly under construction close to Accra’s Kotoka International Airport, and is managed by JHI Properties Ghana, a local subsidiary of a South African property firm.

“Retail is coming up all over the place. I think a lot of people are interested in malls and shops… the setting of the malls where you can go in and you can get everything is more inviting than going to a market where everything is open and it’s crowded and it’s crazy,” says manager of the mall Florence Menson.
This push in new malls is led by South African capital. According to the IMF, the average growth of African economies for last year and this year was between 5% and 6%. South Africa’s economy, the most developed on the continent, is closely tied to the economies of developed nations. However, stagnation in Western economies resulted in South Africa experiencing lower economic growth – less than the continent’s average. Thus, South African brands such as Shoprite, Game, Woolworth, Mr Price and Truworths are looking to other African countries such as Ghana to bolster profits.

Challenges to growth

However, the growth of retail property development is not without its challenges.

“I think the number one [challenge] will be most retailers telling you that the rents are high… import duties seem to be one of the things that they talk about. And then the fact that for new retailers, unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any tax breaks for them with regard to the investment that they’re putting into the retail [economy],” says Luri.

Menson highlights another challenge: adjusting to longer working hours.

“I think the people [staff] are not quite ready for working long hours [as demanded in mall situations]. I think human resources management is a huge problem because some of the service providers that we use are not used to these long hours [working on shift basis and closing late at night]. Usually everybody here [in Ghana] works nine to five. Here you have to work till 10pm, you have to work on weekends,” she says.
Menson says the unreliable electricity supply also affects business.

Despite these challenges, Broll Ghana estimates that around 110,000m² of retail space will become available over the next 12- 24 months – in Accra and other cities such as Kumasi and Takoradi (the hub of the country’s oil and gas industry).

There are currently a number of retail property developments underway: the $93m West Hills Mall; One Airport Square and Nester Square, both in the Airport City development; and Oxford Street Mall on the tourist favourite Oxford Street in downtown Osu, Accra. In Kumasi, the $48m Garden City Mall will open later this year.

The world’s second largest supermarket retailer, French firm Carrefour, this year announced it will open shop in Ghana through African distribution company CFAO.
 

Stability attracts investors

Last week, Ghana’s Supreme Court affirmed the results of the country’s December 2012 election, after a challenge by the opposition. Will this political stability attract more investors?

“We have shown that we have stability,” says Yaw Adu-Koranteng, a research analyst at NDK Asset Management, a local financial advisory firm in Accra.

He says most investors moving into African countries are concerned about risk, especially political risk. “We’ve shown that Ghana is a place where their investments will be safe… I think going forward it’s going to be a plus for Ghana in terms of attracting foreign direct investment.”

Menson says a lot of office buildings are under construction. International companies are also moving into the country and need office space. “The economy out there even in the developed countries is not great, even the Ghanaians who are gone [those living abroad] are coming back home. So, I think there’s a lot of room for growth and a lot of people are seeing the potential in Ghana,” she says.

“If you look at some of the grocery retailers, talk about the likes of Carrefour and talk about the likes of Casino Group, all these [retailers] are looking at Ghana. Talk about international fashion labels and they are all looking at Ghana and so there’s a lot of demand coming from there and that’s fuelling all the projects that we have on the table”, Luri says.

Holiday Inn Ghana's GM on Ghana's 2012 election and Business!

This article was published on the website www.howwemadeitinafrica.com on 30th Sept. 2013


Bruce Potter has been the general manager of the Holiday Inn Accra Airport hotel in Ghana’s capital since its opening in November 2008. The hotel was named Best Business Hotel, Ghana, in Business Destinations’ 2013 Travel Awards, and Potter has been named Business Destinations’ General Manager of the Year, Africa, 2013. The hotel also hosted US President Barack Obama and the first family when they visited Ghana in 2009.
 

Bruce Potter, GM of Holiday Inn Accra Aiport hotel, Ghana

Potter has been part of the campaign to firmly establish the Holiday Inn brand in West Africa. He shares his experiences and advice with potential investors.

Describe Holiday Inn Accra Airport’s business? 

We are one of the busy hotels like many – there are 10-12 [upper segment] hotels in Accra. We all have our fair share of our customers. Business this year has been slower than the years in the past and I am putting that down to the high court case regarding the government (Ghana’s 2012 election result was challenged by the opposition in the Supreme Court), which meant that investors have been waiting to see [the outcome] before making any steps to invest.

Every year when there’s an election, business slows down five or six months beforehand on new investors. The current investors have a rally so business in some respects gets busier before the election so that ties and deals can be struck.

Once a new government starts, as in the past for me, [it’s] taken four to six months before the country gets back into proper gear and this year we’re only starting now, with the government now really having been established to stay in power. I think the next three or four months before Christmas will be a big pickup compared to the rest of the year.

 

What was business like before the December 2012 election?

Business is stronger in Accra for hotels, especially the large corporate establishments. Being near the airport makes it a prime location. The average stay for customers is three to four days. They come in on a Sunday, leave on a Friday. Weekends are traditionally quiet for the hotels but on average over the last four or five years, there’s been a 10% increase [in patronage].

Who visits the hotel?

We cover the world. The largest patronage for the hotel will be American followed by the UK, followed by South Africa, but we cover all the areas from Middle East to as far afield as Russia. We have customers from every part of the world. There is a trend for the Eastern countries to be developing [as visitors]. China has taken over in size although they don’t use the hotels as much but they are making a big difference to construction from where I see [it]. But internationally, all the regions are covered.

What challenges have you encountered in Ghana?

The main challenge with the customer is making sure we reach their expectation. In Ghana, the international expectation is high with the new buildings and the terrain, and the development of Accra over the last years… The staff don’t have the travel experience or the international experience to understand what that customer’s expectation will be. So the challenge is to have a training and teaching on each culture, each nation. Around the world everybody has their own preference [of hotel service].

So the quality of the hospitality industry staff is a concern?

The quality of the person is there. If anything, from my experience now in Ghana, the people here are more willing to learn and understand and are [more] committed than I’ve seen elsewhere. But the experience and what they have seen outside of Ghana is only what they have seen on television, and that is quite different to the real world.

Future plans?

The owner of the hotel has two other properties. He has long stay apartments in Accra’s Airport Residential [Area] called Holi Flats, and in the next two to three months we aim to open a five-star hotel in Takoradi [in Ghana’s Western Region, where crude oil is being produced] and that will be branded as a Best Western.

What advice can you give to potential investors?

They need to find somebody on the ground locally who they can rely on and who has got their interests at heart. It is very easy to arrive in Ghana and be overtaken by the excitement of opportunity and very quickly fall into a trap where deception and money very quickly spent can disappear. The cost of doing things in Ghana has been increasing year on year.

So potential in Ghana is enormous, but know your territory. You can’t bring the ready-made product or work practice from America, UK or Europe into Ghana and think that you can plug-and-play. There’s a whole lot of local learning to be done before you succeed.

How Ghana’s Michael Agyekum Addo built his business with almost no startup capital

This story was published on the website www.howwemadeitinafrica.com on 23rd August, 2013

As a young boy raised by his single mother in a poor village in Ghana’s Eastern Region, Dr Michael Agyekum Addo is no stranger to adversity. His mother was a trader and became ill when Addo was six years old. As she could no longer work, Addo took over his mother’s selling activity to provide for his two other siblings.

Michael Agyekum Addo

Later on, the benefactor who supported him financially through secondary school died unexpectedly. Addo completed the last five years of school with his fees in arrears because the headmaster of the school was sympathetic to his plight.

He repaid his fees once he had completed his education and was working as a teacher. In 1972 he entered university to study pharmacy. Addo sold jewellery part-time on campus to earn some money.
After working for a private medicine manufacturing company for a few years, Addo started his own business, opening his first pharmacy in 1986. Since then, Addo has built the pharmaceutical company Kama Group.

Growing his business

Kama, which means “excellence” in the local Akan language, now employs over 400 staff and boasts 11 wholesale and retail outlets across Ghana, two pharmaceutical factories, a micro-finance firm, real estate business and a multi-purpose conference centre.

Getting capital to start his very first shop was a challenge, so Addo set his business up by borrowing almost everything.
“I must say that I didn’t have any money, not a cent, not a dollar, but I depended upon networking, the people I knew,” he says.

Addo says he came from a poor family with no relatives to help him, but had “dreams and determination”. He saw closed up shops and enquired about them. He asked about one closed shop whose owner was living in Ivory Coast, and “he gave it to me on credit”.

Buying the supplies he needed on credit was how Addo started his business. He earned the trust of his suppliers by repaying them as soon as he could. “The furnishing and the painting were all done on credit and I started getting my first supplies also on credit and reliably tried to pay back and collect new stuff, pay back, replenish, pay and replenish, consistently like that and I grew my business with the profit that I made.”

Start with the familiar

Addo is now a successful entrepreneur whose company is named on the Ghana Club 100, a listing of the most prestigious companies in Ghana. He advises entrepreneurs to start a business in an industry with which they are familiar.
“Going on my own was much easier because I knew the terrain. So I believe that… what your parents have been doing, what you are aware of, what you have also tried on as an apprentice, those are the areas that you’ve got to start your [entrepreneurship] life, before you go to what other people have been successful in. The fact that others have been successful does not mean that you can also be successful,” he says.

Teachers can groom entrepreneurs

As a deeply religious person who believes in giving back, he has established the Kama Education Project which trains teachers to make entrepreneurs out of students from a young age.
“My belief is that the teacher can do better, the teacher can do well, the teacher can change the whole world. It is the teacher who churns out the doctors, engineers, politicians, name them. So it’s the same teacher who can create jobs through these people that he handles.”

Addo believes giving students practical insight into their field of study is vital to teaching.
“When I gather these teachers, 500 at a time, I tell them the theory behind teaching which they know already. Then the practical form as per each subject; what are the areas that you can take the children to for [field] excursion for them to see how the topic that you are teaching is related to practical life. You could also invite the contractors or the people in that field, in that practical field, to come to the classroom,” he says.

Addo is concerned with promoting education and entrepreneurship in Ghana, and has written a book detailing his advice called The Seven Principles of Success and Wealth Creation.

DerryDean Dadzie: Ghanaian tech entrepreneur says good relationships are everything in business

This profile was published on the website www.howwemadeitinafrica.com on 18th July, 2013

One of the emerging trends – in Ghana in particular and Africa in general – is the growth of technology entrepreneurs. One of these is the young Ghanaian startup, DreamOval Limited, led by its 31 year old co-founder and CEO Derrydean Dadzie. DreamOval develops internet and mobile software solutions and provides a payment platform for banks and telecom providers. The company has grown to include 25 employees since its inception in 2007. 
 

DerryDean Dadzie

Dadzie started DreamOval at the age of 24 and in 2011 he was recognised as Ghana’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2012, DreamOval was awarded the National Youth Achievers Gold Award in ICT. Anthony Sedzro sits down with Dadzie to talk about his entrepreneurial journey and some of the lessons he has learnt.


Describe what DreamOval does and give us a profile of some of your clients.

We build software for companies in banking, agriculture, shipping, telecoms, and for individuals.
We have built software for bill payments, online banking, mobile banking and others. We provide software for five banks, including Ghana’s biggest bank, GCB. We also partner with mobile telecom operators and port authorities and others.
We have mobile agriculture software that sends SMSs to 20,000 Ghanaian cocoa farmers, to [help them] increase their productivity.

What motivated you to become an entrepreneur?

I have always had an entrepreneur in my persona and also in the way I do things. From my childhood to secondary school days, I’ve always helped people and I’ve always wanted to try better ways of doing things and taking up opportunities.
The software company I worked for was okay, but I thought we needed to deliver services in a different way, be on the internet, use new technology and deliver our existing services in a channel agnostic way. I reckoned, being on the internet, we could go global… These were the kind of suggestions I brought to the table, but they were not ready to move along with me. So when my friend approached me, I thought it was an opportunity to do the things I believed in. Four of us thus started it together.

How did you finance your startup and what was the process like?

Funds came from friends and family and personal savings of the co-founders. We didn’t spend a lot of money on ourselves… A classmate of ours donated money to us and we bought our own wood and with a carpenter’s help, made our own furniture. A colleague’s uncle gave us money to rent a small office. The passion was there and that was what drove us.

 

Considering your young age, what is the ripe time to become an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurship [comes from] within. Your challenges and how you perceive them determine how you take opportunities around you. There’s no specific age, but to succeed as an entrepreneur you need to know people. So your life should be built around building good relationships with people.
You need to let people trust you and it can only happen through the way you talk, approach people and the way you show them what you know. That process should be started from a very tender age and that forms the basis of becoming a good entrepreneur. You don’t build a successful business around products. A successful business thrives on good relationships.

What mistakes did you make and how did you learn from them?

Initially you want the business so bad that you don’t care about agreements. You need to take legal agreements seriously. You also need confidence for people to trust you. We didn’t care about relationships, as we felt that once the product was good people will just like it. In other words we did not put adequate emphasis on business model excellence but rather focused on product features and related elements. The challenge with this approach is that you would have built a great product without the corresponding viable business framework to support and drive it.

Describe your dreams for the future

We want to go global by expanding our territories and partner network. We have partners in Singapore and Kenya, plus relationships in USA that contribute immensely to our bottom-line. We also want to set up a technology campus called “Dreamville” to train and raise technology entrepreneurs. We have already acquired the land, and are working on it.

What advice do you have for first time entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship starts from your childhood. But if you position yourself well as a person and build your reputation and good relationships, you will do well. For startups, don’t make product excellence your premium but get the whole business model right.

THE NEW 17.5% VAT: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY

INTRODUCTION

The past 12 months have seen the introduction of various taxes on different economic activities including farm inputs, fishing gear, imports and even on condoms (jokingly named "sex tax" by the media).

During the reading of the government’s 2014 budget statement in November 2013, Finance Minister Seth Terkper announced an increase in the Value Added Tax (VAT) rate from 15% to 17.5%. The new VAT Act 2013, (Act 870) received Presidential Assent on 30^th December and it was subsequently gazetted the next day.

Mr Terkper also announced that the scope of the new increase was to be extended to some economic activities which were not covered previously. These new areas are sales of real estate, financial services, domestic aviation, haulage services, auctioneers, pharmaceuticals and operation of Spa businesses and gymnasia. 

The question to ask is why is the government roping in other hitherto services that were VAT exempt?

The government has seen its revenue sources fall drastically other the past few years. This is due mainly to the fall in the price of gold (the country’s top export earner) on the international market and cocoa, the increase in the government’s public sector wage bill and to some extent, the cut back on tapering in the United States. As a result, the government’s budget deficit has widened to 11.8% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Finance Minister has assured to cut the budget deficit from 11.8% to 8.5% this year. 

As a result, taxation and specifically the new VAT rate of 17.5% is just one of those measures intended to raise revenue to close the fiscal deficit.

This article will be restricted to the effect of the new VAT regime on ‘Financial Services’ provision in the country. The circular from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) giving the details of the tax explained that the Act extended coverage to “the supply of financial services that are rendered for a fee, commission or a similar charge”.

“Financial Services means provision of insurance; issue, transfer, receipt of, or dealing with money whether in domestic or foreign currency or any note or order of payment of money; provision of credit; or operation of a bank account or an account of a similar institution. Life insurance and reinsurance services are however exempt from the tax whether or not such services are rendered for a fee, commission or a similar charge”, the information further revealed.

EFFECTS

VAT is largely a consumer tax in that the final consumer is the one who will bear the increase. Some of the services from the financial institutions (universal banks, micro-credit institutions, insurance firms, forex bureaus, etc) that will be affected by VAT are cost of issuing cheque books, service charges on operating bank accounts, Automated Teller Machine (ATM) services, insurance premiums, foreign currency transactions and so on. 

Since the new VAT came into force, some banks have already introduced some measures to reflect this and their customers are bearing the brunt of these measures. Ecobank Ghana has increased its service charge on ATM cash withdrawals, ATM cash transactions which hitherto used to be free on Stanbic Bank now attract a quarterly fee and just last month, Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) has increased the minimum balance on its Savings accounts from GHC5 to a surprising GHC50. 

Financial inclusion-or access to financial and banking services for citizens-is quite low in Ghana. Less than 30% of the Ghanaian population has a bank account, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Thus the fear of the banking community is that a higher cost of keeping a bank account will discourage people from patronizing banking services and leading to a reduction in mobilizing savings.

As expected, bankers and other analysts are not happy with their services been captured by VAT. When the new tax rate was announced, bankers complained of not being consulted. The President of the Ghana Association of Bankers, Simon Donoo-Nartey said that the association will meet with the Ministry of Finance to deliberate on the issue.

One financial sub-sector that has expressed the strongest disapproval of charging VAT on their services is the insurance industry. If access to banking services is low, patronage of insurance policies is even lower. At present, insurance penetration in the country is less than two percent in a market with 43 insurance companies in both the life and non-life insurance sectors. In a country where many people use majority of their income on basic commodities, insurance products are seen as a luxury. Although the new VAT exempts life insurance and re-insurance policies, non-life insurance products especially motor insurance premiums will be hit. 

In an interview with the Business & Financial Times (B&FT) newspaper after the introduction of the new tax, Kwame Agbenyadzie, President of the Ghana Insurers Association (GIA) - the trade association of insurance and reinsurance companies- said the new tax will see not only an increase in insurance premiums but it will have a wider effect on the economy as a whole.

“The likely effect we will see is that if the VAT is implemented and charged on the premium, we’ll pass it on to the final consumer. Motor insurance, for instance, is compulsory and that is where a lot of people will be affected; because if motor insurance goes up it is likely that the transport unions will adjust transport fares accordingly to reflect the increment, and that will impact on the cost of transportation and food as well as other fast-moving goods”.

A lot of open markets have been burnt by fire last year and this year as well. Many of the traders in those markets were not insured. Many of these affected traders then have to appeal to government for financial bailout. The response of the government was to establish a GHC2 million fund to compensate traders nationwide for their loss. According to Agbenyadzie, an increase in insurance in premiums will not encourage uptake in insurance policies and this will have social consequences.

“Insurance has an elastic demand and we have very low insurance penetration rate in this country. We are now trying to get people to buy non-life insurance products because we believe that if people insure their own assets, in the event of any misfortune they can be compensated adequately instead of them appealing to government for help -- which would create a social burden for the state”.

On the wider implication for the financial sector, the new VAT will lead to lower tax revenue for the government, according to Toma Imihre, Editor of Accra-based Business Finder newspaper.

Mr Imihre said “if you increase corporate tax from let’s say 20% to 40% and the companies profit falls from 50 million to 5 million, do the math; government is making less money not more money.”

CONCLUSION

Taxes serve as a key source of revenue for governments. Extending VAT to financial services may actually end up in less money for the government rather, if the views of the stakeholders above are anything to go by.

Is the rise of the Ghanaian Women Bankers finally here?

INTRODUCTION

Women have always being constant features of Ghanaian life. There are some sectors in the country where the survival of sectors has rested on the shoulders of hard working women. 

 

From left: Nilla Selormey, Patience Akyianu, Abiola Bawuah and Subu Giwa-Awu

 According to data from Ghana's 2010 Population Census, women make up more than 50% of the population compared to just 49% for men. Globally, there are more women than men. In the United Kingdom for instance, girls outperform boys from primary level to university level. Yet in the year 2012, of the FTSE top 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, only 2 of them had women CEOs.

In spite of their numerical strength, women are not well represented in top management positions in corporate Ghana. The Banking and finance industry is no exception.

As at the end of 2012, of the over 25 universal banks in Ghana, none could boast of a female as a substantive Managing Director (MD) or Chief Executive Officer (CEO). All the banks were run by men. Then in the last six months, the picture changed. Four (4) women had risen to become the MDs of their respective banks. In our banking industry, it is unprecedented to have 4 women heading banks at the same time. 

The newly appointed female MDs are Mrs Patience Akyianu, an accountant and a career banker who took over the topmost position at Barclays Ghana in October 2013; Nilla Selormey got appointed in December 2013 as the MD of Merchant Bank after its take over by Fortiz; Abiola Barwuah took over the helm at United Bank for Africa (UBA) in January this year; and last but not least, this month saw Nigerian, Subu Giwa-Awu appointed as the new MD of International Commercial Bank (ICB).

Not that there are not women heading financial institutions in the country. In the Non-banking financial sector (or micro-finance) there are at least two such female CEOs. Mrs Frances Adu-Mante heads EB-Accion (the micro-finance arm of Ecobank Ghana) and Mrs Sarah Zetterli runs Procredit Bank. Mrs Felicity Acquah finished her tenure as CEO of Exim Guaranty bank last year. In the insurance sub-sector, the biggest insurance company in Ghana, State Insurance Company (SIC) made history last year by appointing Mrs Doris Awo Nkani as its first female MD.

THE TRAIL BLAZERS

While it is worth celebrating these topmost women bank appointments, it will be equally worthwhile to mention that their path has been well-travelled by some distinguished women in the past. 

Mrs Helen Lokko, a chartered accountant, blazed a trail when she became the first woman to become MD of Ghana's biggest bank, the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) from the mid 1990s up till the year 2000. Later in January 2003, Mrs Matilda Obeng-Ansong, a career GCB woman also took over the helm until she left in 2004.

Years earlier, the mortgage firm, the Home Finance Company (HFC) had been set up to provide mortgages. The World Bank had asked trained lawyer, Mrs Stephanie Baeta-Ansah to lead the company. According to Mrs Baeta-Ansah    that was a time the World Bank "couldn't find men". Later in 2003 HFC applied to become a universal bank and it was awarded a universal banking license in November that year. Thus Stephanie Baeta-Ansah became the first MD of the new HFC bank.

In 2004 Barclays Bank Ghana also appointed Margaret Mwanakatwe, a Zambian to head the oldest bank in the country. 

REASONS FOR THE RISE

Although having four female CEOs out of about 28 universal banks represents just 14% of the total, it is still encouraging. It will be good to understand some of the reasons for this new trend.

The changing role of women is a major factor. In times past many women were home makers. However, the changing structure of the economy and modern societal evolution means that many women now pursue full time careers either to supplement the household income or in furtherance of their own career ambitions. Thus many women even delay marriage and child-birth these days in order to build their career educational goals. Many women thus work their way up the corporate ladder so there is a large pool of management talent to choose from.  In March 2012, the board chairman of UBA Bank, Kwame Pianim, revealed in a speech that women made up 53% of the entire workforce of UBA Ghana.

 

Banking consultant Nana Otuo Acheampong, seems to agree that the trend is changing. "Our banking industry has been having women for a long time. Until recently some of them did not want to be career women because of family commitments but now we are getting into a situation where more women are becoming career women", he explained in an interview with Accra-based radio station, Citi FM. 

A closer look at the background of these newly appointed bank heads reveal similar patterns. Nilla Selormey  has over 20 years banking experience gathered by working for Fidelity, Zenith and Ecobank. Patience Akyianu boasts over 20 years banking experience through working for Standard Chartered South Africa and Barclays Ghana. Abiola Bawuah has more than 10 years banking profile built from Strategic African Securities, Calbank, Stanchart and Zenith bank. Giwa-Awu has more than 20 years financial experience majority of which was spent with First Bank of Nigeria, the largest bank in Nigeria. All 4 have more than 10 years of experience in their sector gathered by working for different banks when they needed to. They all have postgraduate degrees as well.

This is suggestive of a clear ambitious plan to pursue career goals and going as high as possible. Ambition, hard work and determination is evident across all these MDs.

Appointments to CEO positions of listed banks are done by the Boards of Directors. These boards will not appoint a CEO if they are not sure that the latter will bring return on shareholder's funds. In other sectors like the Judiciary, entrepreneurship, academia and in government, many women have excelled. Indeed the immediate past Speaker of Parliament was a woman. The immediate past Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast who is a Minister of State now is a woman. The current Chief Justice of Ghana is a woman. Many others are distinguishing themselves in various fields, lending credence to the fact that women are equally competent. I believe these boards thus had no choice than to give the opportunity to these accomplished women bankers.

THE FUTURE

With an ever-expanding economy and more women delaying choosing to pursue full time careers like men do, are we likely to see more women at the top of more banks? UBA's Abiola Bawuah thinks so. "Yes, it's going to be. Women do not only lead with just their heads but with their hearts as well and I think you need to be compassionate to your staff and I think women have consistently demonstrated that. I believe looking at the sterling performance of women leaders, which is what is going to encourage other people to want to use women in their organisations. People are beginning to accept women more easily and women need to believe in themselves", she revealed to Citi Business News.

Nana Otuo Acheampong concurs, "If you take out the MD position there are quite a number of general management positions...and there are quite a sizable number of women occupying these general positions...and I think gradually you will see some of them rising to come to the level of MDs".

Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook and a women's advocate once said “girls have to be ambitious at work and boys have to be ambitious at home”.

I think it is an advice in season!