The Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ghana (CIMG) has called businesses engaged in cross-border trade to channel their resources into producing goods and services that meet the development needs of the African continent.

National President of CIMG, Dr Daniel Kasser Tee, noted that such a move offers Ghana a comparative advantage in response to the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and push the country’s export drive around the continent.

He was speaking at the CIMG’s 32nd annual National Marketing Performance Awards ceremony, held in Accra last Saturday.

Organised on the theme ‘Repositioning Ghana to leverage AfCFTA for economic development’, the event saw 41 companies being presented awards for their enormous and encouraging performance for the year 2020 in various categories.

As a country with a stable political climate, stability in a growing democracy and a steadily growing economy, Dr Kasser Tee said Ghana was well-placed to firmly establish itself as a nation with both comparative and competitive advantages in education to effectively leverage AfCFTA for growth.

He noted that the required benefits of AfCFTA could not be derived without first harnessing and marshalling the nation’s core competences.

He said it was imperative that the country focuses on instilling marketing and entrepreneurship mindset of the youth.

“This means recalibrating the educational curriculum with marketing and entrepreneurship weaved into it.

We can deploy this strategy at the senior high school level and at the tertiary level, as must take courses for all students, so as to produce potential entrepreneurs with the requisite skills for building business,” he added.

He said it was necessary the orientation of the youth of Ghana was changed from being over reliant on the public sector for jobs.

He explained that a focus on the private sector, where they could start as entrepreneurs or employees of entrepreneurs, with the opportunity of learning to set up businesses of their own without fear, would help in building a new generation of entrepreneurs.

Dr Kasser Tee called for the review of policies on education, regarding entry requirements for training professionals.

“Without lowering standards and compromising on quality, Ghana should open its doors to training more professionals with the aim of positioning the country, as a supplier of professional services to the larger African market of about 1.2 billion people rather than concentrating solely on the limited 30.8million population as our market,” he stated.

At the event, MrSelormAdedevoh, Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, and DrMrs Edith Dankea, Chief Executive Officer of B&FT were awarded as the Marketing Man and Woman and were presented with a memento, citation, certificate and a personal accident insurance cover from GLICO worth GH¢200,000, GH¢ 2000 worth of fuel from Goil and a full board executive weekend stay for two at the Coconut Grove Beach Resort Hotel, Elmina.

Mr Eli Hini, CEO of Mobile Financial Services (MTN) was awarded as the Marketing Practitioner of the year and Ms Erica Marfowaa Din-Chin, Key Account Manager of APOTICA was awarded the Marketing Student of the year.

Additionally, the awards ceremony was used to acknowledge the high performers from the maiden CIMG Consumer Satisfaction Index (CSI) organised for the banking sector of which Ecobank Ghana was recognised as the overall best with a bank performance of 97 per cent followed by Prudential Bank with a bank performance of 96 per cent.