Bright business prospects in West Africa
Friday, 31 July 2009
Sohel Mahboob
West Africa is a great place to do business. The West African countries are huge, low in population and high in gross domestic product (GDP) (compared to Bangladesh) and they are endowed with an enormous amount of natural resources. People from the Far East and the Near East have flocked there. The Bangladeshi entrepreneurs are lagging behind though they have some advantages over their competitors.
With the presence of Bangladeshis in the UN missions, Bangladesh is well known to the West African people and the Bangladeshi business people are also popular. The bourse of Sierra Leone has been opened by a Bangladeshi! The Sierra Leone government has declared Bangla as their second language! Countless roads are named after the young engineers and infantry officers who paved those roads in the African landscape! The Imams at the mosques call upon the congregations at Juma prayers: 'My people! Be as good as the Bangladeshis'!
The prospects for business in West Africa are great. If you open a store or an import house in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, there will be people coming to buy things from 15 other countries which fall into the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States). Only 1.0% of statistical tax is levied for taking products across the countries. Which means, it's a market spread over the whole of West Africa of 26 million people. The land-locked countries above -- Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- are all dependent on the ports in Accra, Tema, Takoradi, Abidjan, Monrovia and Freetown. All you will have to do is to go there, open an well-equipped import house and start importing products, and you shall never have to look back. Besides, the presence of a large number of Bangladeshi soldiers will keep you relaxed.
The West African countries have a single currency, so transactions across the countries are not much of a hassle. The weather? You won't believe how pleasant is the weather there. One t-shirt can last a week on your body without the slightest line of sweat! The average temperature is 29 degrees with very low humidity. So it's very pleasant weather there. People from the West are buying huge stretches of land there. They have vision. When there will be world-wide food crises, they won't suffer as they will already have their farm lands in Africa to supply them grain from their farm lands!
There is zero entrepreneurship in the West African countries. Let me give you a few examples, there are 500 miles of sea shore in Ivory Coast but not a single salt industry! There are miles and miles of cocoanut groves but they dry their clothes on ground, for they don't know how to make ropes from cocoanut coir! They have rubber gardens, on virtually endless stretch of land but they don't know how to make rubberised coir mattress! They (the Ivoirians) export cacao. They are the biggest cacao exporter in the world. But alas! Our jute bags or burlap bags are not going there!
The writer can be reached at e-mail: runinan@gmail.com
West Africa is a great place to do business. The West African countries are huge, low in population and high in gross domestic product (GDP) (compared to Bangladesh) and they are endowed with an enormous amount of natural resources. People from the Far East and the Near East have flocked there. The Bangladeshi entrepreneurs are lagging behind though they have some advantages over their competitors.
With the presence of Bangladeshis in the UN missions, Bangladesh is well known to the West African people and the Bangladeshi business people are also popular. The bourse of Sierra Leone has been opened by a Bangladeshi! The Sierra Leone government has declared Bangla as their second language! Countless roads are named after the young engineers and infantry officers who paved those roads in the African landscape! The Imams at the mosques call upon the congregations at Juma prayers: 'My people! Be as good as the Bangladeshis'!
The prospects for business in West Africa are great. If you open a store or an import house in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, there will be people coming to buy things from 15 other countries which fall into the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States). Only 1.0% of statistical tax is levied for taking products across the countries. Which means, it's a market spread over the whole of West Africa of 26 million people. The land-locked countries above -- Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- are all dependent on the ports in Accra, Tema, Takoradi, Abidjan, Monrovia and Freetown. All you will have to do is to go there, open an well-equipped import house and start importing products, and you shall never have to look back. Besides, the presence of a large number of Bangladeshi soldiers will keep you relaxed.
The West African countries have a single currency, so transactions across the countries are not much of a hassle. The weather? You won't believe how pleasant is the weather there. One t-shirt can last a week on your body without the slightest line of sweat! The average temperature is 29 degrees with very low humidity. So it's very pleasant weather there. People from the West are buying huge stretches of land there. They have vision. When there will be world-wide food crises, they won't suffer as they will already have their farm lands in Africa to supply them grain from their farm lands!
There is zero entrepreneurship in the West African countries. Let me give you a few examples, there are 500 miles of sea shore in Ivory Coast but not a single salt industry! There are miles and miles of cocoanut groves but they dry their clothes on ground, for they don't know how to make ropes from cocoanut coir! They have rubber gardens, on virtually endless stretch of land but they don't know how to make rubberised coir mattress! They (the Ivoirians) export cacao. They are the biggest cacao exporter in the world. But alas! Our jute bags or burlap bags are not going there!
The writer can be reached at e-mail: runinan@gmail.com