Akua Aboabea Aboah, Managing Director of Sambus Geospatial Limited, has suggested the establishment of more family businesses to arrest the growing concern of the unemployment rate in Ghana, which is a major security threat.
Ms Aboah was convinced that family business held the key of taking the teeming unemployed youth off the streets to meet their daily needs, and enable them to contribute their quota to nation building.
Speaking in an interview with journalists in Accra last Friday, she said, although the phenomenon of family business had not been successful in this part of the world in most cases, others had good examples to show.
Ms. Aboah asserted that some of these foreign multinational corporations and organisations started off as family business in garages and farmhouses before taking centre stage in the international arena.
Being the second generation to manage Sambus after her late father, Kenneth Aboah, she observed that even though the job market was choked most of the youth were not concerned with building their family businesses.
As a result, Ghana’s experience with family enterprises had not been the best, as most micro, small and medium scale businesses collapse soon after the demise of their founders, merely because of lack or no planning, poor commitment and devotion on the part of the successor.
Indeed, she said, instead of those who inherit family businesses investing resources and fine-tuning the overall objectives and vision of the family business, they either become complacent or abandon the core duty of the business to chase their personal goals.
Ms. Aboah added that she had purposed to see that Sambus live beyond her generation, and would endeavour to invest all her attention, resources, hire professionals and consultants to take the company to the next level.
To prove her words, she is building the company on transparency, honesty, financial discipline, engaging professionals and committed staff, philanthropy, alliances, as well as systems.
“I can’t go to the office and say give me this, because of the system in place. The system has checks and balances. The business must go beyond me,” she added.
Ms. Aboah has grown the staff strength from 16 to 60, and has expanded the office from Accra to Kumasi, Lagos and Abuja.
Sambus Geospatial Limited is a technology integration firm that provides a range of Geospatial Solutions to all industries.
