I STAND BY MENZGOLD
I just want to use this medium to commend the CEO and the entire team of Menzgold and its subsidiaries. I do not have any affiliations with them (the people nor their business) but they have earned my respect as a young entrepreneur. I don’t want go into the history (I actually do not know much and not so interested) but I have known (seen them around) at least for the past 5 years.
I have seen and heard of other businesses that has sprung out of Nana Appiah’s desire to give himself as benefit to humanity. I can estimate thousands of people who have been employed directly and indirectly as a result of the vision and hard work of this young man, not to talk of the numerous Ghanaians who are enjoying the mouthwatering interest on their investment with his company.
I was blown away when a saw recent publications of the inauguration of the new Barcelona Branch in Spain. But I thought to myself; how come a country like Spain with all their economic advancement could not identify these “flaws” we are seeing with this young man and his business but allowed this ‘young black foreigner’ do business on their soil. Or could this be a justification of the perceived Ghanaian “phd (pull him down)” attitude? Day in day out there is a statement from a “powerful person” in authority or a regulatory body adding to the campaign that is ultimately aimed at the closure of the company. Funny enough I hear people make some lame statements as “I knew Nana in my area”, “I know this guy for Adisco”, “I don’t believe he is doing a genuine business”, “how did he get all these all of sudden?” and so forth! I just cannot imagine how it feels when every single day you are up as a young person you are greeted by bad publications from renowned media. It really beats my thinking when your ambition is to create a better life for thousands of people who you do not even set an eye on only to be paid with chastisement from the people and the desire to utterly bring you down.
I have never met him in person nor heard him speak (not even in a video), and I could even count the number of times I have seen his picture on the internet, however, I see a selfless young man (maybe in his early thirties) of great potentials and long vision.
As a young entrepreneur, I have seen many other ambitious and intriguing young men and women both home and in the diaspora with such desire to unleash their potentials into transforming our nation but we consider what the regulators and the systems are doing to our mentors, and bow out before starting anything. As a matter of fact, starting up in Ghana is suffocating and it becomes more frustrating when you have taken off and are confronted by these ‘giant’ many of whom are not privy to what goes into starting a business from scratch to the level where other peoples’ destinies are depending on it. I laud Nana Appiah and his team once again for their tenacity throughout these ‘hardship’. I like to remind the opposing “giants” that the war against Menzgold as we see it is a war against destines and should they “win”, government should be prepared to absorb the many unemployed guys into their sector, and the few ones we will be unlucky to have them going into vices, we should have ourselves to blame.
Here are my recommendations;
1. Can we listen to them? By listening to them, I mean can the regulators make a deliberate move without prejudice to studiously examine their mode of operation, both in document and implementation. It looks quite clear to me the guys are bringing something to the table that is different from our traditional funds management. It could perhaps be something though not illegal, it is not known nor regarded and for that matter not captured in the documentations of the regulatory bodies. This will help identify the missing link and develop modules, trainings, programs or regulations to fine-tune the model. And,
2. Secondly, especially to the government, can we redefine the roles of the regulatory bodies to also provide mentoring for certain categories of businesses? or if it is already a part of their responsibilities, we empower them to give that much attention also rather than concentrating too much on probing that seems to be eventually aiming at finding faults and inflicting institutions with fear of failure as is often happening in recent times.
What will it take from you to think positive or talk positive about others, even if you can’t take the risk they take.
Ghana beyond aid is possible if only we support our own growth.
I stand by Menzgold, I stand by Nana Appiah, I stand by all the young and old (persons and organisations) who are working with passion to make this country a better place, I stand by Ghana!
