On Friday, January 10, 2014, Ashesi hosted over 50 students, staff and faculty from Babson College for the annual Babson-Ashesi Business Seminar.
The seminar, an initiative of Prof Dennis Hanno from Babson, is held each year to allow students from both universities to interact with each other and to explore unique perspectives on business and entrepreneurship in Ghana. Speakers at this year's seminar included Social Media Strategist Maximus Ametorgoh, and Kofi Bentil, Business Strategy lecturer, lawyer and policy analyst. Ashesi Professor Dr. Esi Ansah, and alums Regina Agyare '05 and Kobla Nyomi '11, also joined the seminar to speak about startups in Ghana.
Introducing the Babson students to the Ashesi community, Prof Hanno explained that Ashesi's relationship with Babson had become more 'intimate' over the past years since he first met Ashesi's President, Dr. Awuah. He congratulated Dr. Awuah for earning an honourary degree from Babson, and added that it was a remarkable accomplishment.
"The honourary degree is the highest award we can give to anyone who is not a Babson graduate, and keep in mind that he's the first African to be honoured that way by Babson," he said, before opening up the stage for the first speaker.
Speaking on the "use of social media as a tool for economic and social development in Ghana," Maximus explained how the internet - especially social media - has redefined communication for many Ghanaian businesses and brands.
"Social media has taken off in Ghana," Maximus said. "People are now using it for citizen journalism, building communities and strengthening democracy, among others. In Ghana, Facebook is the top website at the moment, not the government or news websites. The ability to build conversations through social media is creating more and more opportunities for Ghana to drive social and economic development."
On his part, Kofi Bentil spoke about "independent citizen efforts to improve governance systems in Ghana," touching on how people were plugging into law, policy and economic management systems, but could do more.
"Middle-class Ghanaians are Ghana's biggest problem, but also its biggest potential," he explained. "We have tended to gravitate towards the wrong things in Ghana, but over the past 20 years, there's this group of people who have become switched on and have decided that they would not be corrupted."
"Ghana's systems work, but we citizens are not working it enough; and even though it is hard to get people to speak up and confront leaders, it is the job of people like me to educate people on the cost of not speaking up."
Alums Regina and Kobla also shared a panel, led by Ashesi Dr. Ansah, discussing their experiences managing startups at different stages of growth, and how they worked within the challenges and potential of Ghana's business environment.
"We were excited by the interactions and the ideas that were shared throughout the entire programme," said Millicent Adjei, Associate Director of Diversity and International Programmes at Ashesi. "We hope to carry on the conversations and work towards building more out of it."
