True Story: How Dumsor Forced Promising Entrepreneur Out Of Business
- By: Dorcas Efe Mensah | Infoboxdaily
- Apr 6, 2015
- 3 min read
As far back as 40 years ago when she started studying design, illustration and clothes stitching at her mother’s feet in London.
As we sit in front of her plush artifacts shop in Osu, Akua Ofosuhene narrates how her passion for fashion got sapped away by a situation we have all had the ‘pleasure’ to deal with in Ghana for the past few years – DUMSOR.
“I’ve been sewing all my life”, she said. “I would say for the last 40 years I have always sewn”. Today however, she doesn’t sew anymore.
Akua began her fashion career as a teenager. Watching her mother make clothes for people each day, she developed love for the craft. First, she just helped her mum out but with time, Akua realised her interest in fashion went beyond the boundaries of her mum’s shop. Thus, she decided to take it up as a career.
After decades of working in her mother’s shadow, she moved to Ghana, her homeland, to establish her own fashion business.
Back in the UK, she recalls, she and her friends saw Ghana as the right destination for business. According to her, they thought of the country as “the promise land”; “the number one country for making money”.
That is why in 2009, she came down to found Freedom Country; a small home business that produced handbags, purses, clothes and accessories made from African prints.
Supplying numerous retailers about 100 – 200 bags each week, Akua maintains she could boast of a turnover of about GH₵2000 after supplying each week. She also made a lot of money retailing some of the items at her shop. What made her designs unique was the use of combined prints and textiles from different African countries.
Business was booming and in no time, her home could not contain the operations of Freedom Country anymore. She moved into a rented store in Kokomlemle where she operated until recent economic pressures forced her out of business.
According to the 45-year old mother of two, the free fall of the Ghana Cedi against the dollar, coupled with hyper-inflation and fuel price hikes that characterised the 2014 economic year dwindled the fortunes of her business. Even with that, she managed; but Akua maintains the erratic nature of power supply lately has been the chief cause of the collapse of her business.
She was no longer able to meet her client’s deadlines; she could barely tell when she would have electricity to sew because of the ineffective nature of the load-shedding schedules. Although she had a generator, she could no longer sustain its use due to the cost involved.
“For me, the light-off is the (cause of) death of my sewing and manufacturing business”, she maintains.
Eight of her employees have lost their jobs, except one who helps her run her new artefact shop.
Although she runs a retail artefacts shop now, she is unsure of the future of her new venture. Patronage is low and she attributes that to the consequences of the hard economic times on people’s purchasing power.
“I wish we had people in power who loved this country, who cared about the people. If you can’t fix (the dumsor problem), just tell us the truth”, she insists, pointing to the numerous promises government has made concerning the problem without any of them coming to fruition.
“If you (government) tell us the truth, we will know what to do”.
Like her, many small business owners have been stampeded out of operations as hundreds of workers lose their sources of livelihood. Coca Cola, Mantrac, Fan Milk, Cadbury and others have served notices of intentions to layoff workers. Akua is of the view that Ghanaians would have been better placed to manage their affairs, if government had been honest about the dumsor situation from the very start.
After President John Mahama’s recent pledge to improve the situation by end of 2015, many have expressed doubt about his ability to fix anything after many such promises have all failed.
Akua is contemplating giving up her entrepreneurial dream altogether to search for employment. However, as more and more companies lay off workers, she wonders whether she would be able to find a job.
Or is she only going to add to the long list of unemployed Ghanaians? That is a question she has been asking herself.
She has no confidence in Ghana’s economy as having the ability to recover its status as “the promised land” she came home to, almost five years ago.
Source: Infoboxdaily.com
By: Dorcas Efe Mensah
