Evelyn Fatou Tall, Adjei Sowah (second right) with other dignitaries and participants at the event
Board Chairman of African Management Services Company (AMSCO), Evelyn Fatou Tall, says skills gap is stifling the growth of businesses on the African continent.
Ms. Tall disclosed this while speaking at a business conference organized by AMSCO recently in Accra under the theme: “Business Transforming Africa Conference: Inspiring Innovation for Growth.”
The conference was aimed at providing an enabling environment for private and public businesses, including small enterprises, to access captains in the human resources industry in order to bridge the gap between human capital and business growth.
She indicated that “African governments have maintained prudent macro-economic policies and strengthened financial institutions.
“They also continue to undertake reforms to transform their economies structurally,” according to her.
“However, such efforts are often limited as far as human capital development for small, medium and large enterprises is concerned,” she said.
“We strongly believe that human capital development is the missing key to inspire innovation for real growth,” she lamented.
Ms. Tall therefore called on African states to consider increasing investments in the development of human capital on the continent.
“There is no doubt that we need people driven transformation to be innovative and remain competitive,” she said, adding that “it’s incumbent upon us to strengthen our businesses and the economic environment to make it easier for private investment to flourish.”
Managing Director of Damian Carl Capital, a banking consultancy firm, Nilla Selormey, said addressing the skills gap would require African leaders looking overseas to educate Africans living in the diaspora.
She explained that from the experiences of Ghana’s Finance Minister and Founder of Databank, Ken Ofori-Atta and Patrick Awuah, Founder of the Ashesi University, among others, it shows that engaging Africans living overseas with technical knowledge shall help promote economic growth on the continent.
Mayor of Accra, Mohammed Adjei Sowah, in a statement on behalf of the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Ishmael Ashietey, agreed to the calls for skills training in Ghana and Africa.
“Innovation catalyses growth and there cannot be any innovation if our people lack the required skills.”
“We need a productive labour force for the economy to grow,” he said, noting that “government will continue to work closely with organizations such as AMSCO to implement projects supporting the SME sector in order to increase job creation which shall in turn reduce poverty by significant levels.”
AMSCO is a pan-African private sector development group that provides bespoke human capital development solutions.
It operates in 29 African countries, trains about 2,000 people and supports an average of 85,000 jobs annually.
By Melvin Tarlue