US Based Organization To Address Ghana’s Unemployment

Motivational Centers International, Inc. (MCII – pronounced MCI-squared), a Non Profit Organization (NPO) and a Non Governmental Organization (NGO), based in the United States is to address poverty and unemployment in Ghana and other developing countries.

MCII is a business and youth empowerment center, which was registered in the United States in June of 2002 and is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. MCII has also been registered in Ghana since November of 2002 and has chosen Ghana as the first country to benefit from its services.

The sole objective of MCII is to help reduce the endemic incidence of poverty levels in the developing world, including economically depressed areas (inner cities) of the United States, through job creation. MCII hopes to achieve this by teaching and encouraging the educated-unemployed, preferably, university, polytechnic, technical and vocational college graduates how to write winning and comprehensive business plans, start and manage small businesses. Through this, MCII hopes to increase employment and income levels in developing nations around the world. MCII feels strongly that it is only through the provision of adequate employment opportunities and increases in personal income levels that developing nations can assure themselves of sustained economic growth and the ability to compete effectively in the global economy.

MCII believes that the development of small businesses will help developing economies to grow. The following statistics underscore the importance of small businesses in the development of an economy: in the United States, small businesses create about 70% of all new jobs. About 24 million small businesses employ about 53% of non-farm U.S. workforce and generate more than half of U.S. Gross Domestic Product. In the United States, the U.S. government, through the office of Small Business Administration facilitates start-up loans to small businesses by guaranteeing to pay up to 80% of the loan should the business fail to live up to expectation. In November 2001, the Ghanaian government’s exercise to register the unemployed youth counted 950,000 unemployed nation-wide representing 66% males and 34% females. The lack of jobs in the country leads to brain drain.

In Ghana, for instance, brain drain has resulted in a low standard of living and in the depletion of the country’s meager financial and human capital resources, for which little or no returns accrue to Ghana. It must be recognized that brain drain or the flight of “intellectual capital” and other human capital resources are the direct result of the Ghanaian government’s inability to provide adequate jobs for its youth, hence the need to assist Ghanaians to become entrepreneurial and help the country to provide more job opportunities for the youth to stem the exodus of its citizens and to reduce or alleviate poverty.

Ghana has thousands of doctors, engineers, teachers and other educated experts working in developed countries. Ironically, most of these educated experts obtained their basic and secondary education and sometimes university (tertiary) education free of charge at the expense of Ghana’s fragile economy. Ghanaweb reported on April 14, 2003 that there is a school in Ghana, which trains nurses mainly for the United States. The Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana (Legon) recently declared that 70,000 highly trained Africans leave their home countries annually, whereas Africa spends an estimated US4 billion annually to recruit about 100,000 skilled expatriates. The Prime Minister of Jamaica observed that during the 1977-80 period, over 8,000 top professionals comprising about 50% of the country’s most highly trained citizens left the country primarily for the United States. He estimated that it cost his country about $168.5 million or $20,000 per head to educate these people. During the same period he observed that U.S. aid to Jamaica amounted to a total of $116.3 million. Should these figures be compounded to include the loss developmental ideas and productivity, it will show the enormity of the loss to developing countries, whereas the opposite is true for the developed world. There are figures to support the fact that the industrialized nations of the world are getting the benefits of the trained personnel from Third World countries around the world without contributing a dime towards their training: each year 6,000 Taiwanese come to the United States to study but only 20% return home. A study done by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimated that about 500,000 professionals had left Third world countries since World War II. Developing nations are gradually being reduced to trainers and suppliers of labor, both skilled and unskilled, to the developed countries.

Due to the prevalence of unemployment and the adverse impact of brain drain on Ghana’s economy as evidenced above, two friends, Drs. Matthew Henry Sam Kuofie and Gabriel Ayisi collaborated to address poverty and unemployment problems facing the country. The two co-founded MCII:

Dr. Matthew Kuofie received his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering. Dr. Kuofie is the President of Systems Solutions International, USA. Dr. Kuofie has worked on a number of projects for various companies, including General Motors and Daimler Chrysler.

Dr. Kuofie is also a professor; he teaches business, computer science, and engineering subjects at The University of Michigan and Lawrence Technological University.

Dr. Gabriel Ayisi received his doctorate degree in Educational Administration from Columbia University. Dr Ayisi also holds three masters degrees in Educational Administration, Transcultural and International Education Development and Business Administration. Dr. Ayisi teaches mostly business courses including, Organizational Behavior, Management, Economics, Marketing management, Entrepreneurship, Accounting, Finance, Business Law and International Business. Dr. Ayisi also teaches Advanced Personal Computing in Business at Brooklyn College. He has held Adjunct faculty positions at New York City Technical Institute and New York University.

Through MCII, we are now addressing areas of national concern that have needed attention since Ghana’s independence (1957): extensive job creation through private sector participation; increases in personal incomes; improvements in standards of living; and stemming brain drain in Ghana. To achieve its objectives, MCII will solicit international funding to assist Ghanaians (and in future, other African nationals and nationals of developing countries around the world) to set up small businesses in an attempt to ease the unemployment situation. MCII intends to set up a State-of-the-Arts Business and Youth Empowerment Training Center in Accra. Plans are under way to locate and open the Accra center. MCII is in the process of gathering and shipping equipment and materials such as computers, overhead projectors, VCRs, and textbooks to Ghana. To improve accessibility, similar centers will be set up throughout the country in each regional capital.

MCII seeks to provide the following services to Ghanaians free of charge:

• 1. Assist our clients to set up and manage small businesses
• 2. Assist our clients to obtain funding for their businesses
• 3. Assist our clients to bring in (to Ghana) businesses/outsourced jobs from the Developed countries.
• 4. Assist our clients to hire and train employees
• 5. Assist our clients to be computer literate

Motivational Centers International hopes to collaborate with governments, banks, academic institutions, philanthropists, and funding agencies around the world to provide these services to the unemployed youth. MCII will form an alliance with interested banks whose part will be to provide funding for the projects with the Ghana government guaranteeing the loans. The selected candidates will undertake a six-month intensive course with MCII in entrepreneurship with emphasis on writing of business plans for their proposals. MCII Centers will offer management and information technology subjects. Some of the subjects to be offered will include:

1) Principles of management,
2) Principles of marketing management,
3) Introduction to information technology
4) Information security management,
5) Entrepreneurship, and
6) Introduction to business law.

Upon graduation and the establishment of the start-ups, MCII will continue to monitor the start-ups and offer free and continuing consulting advice until the ventures are successful.

An external evaluator will evaluate MCII’s performance in terms of the following:

1) Number of students trained
2) Number of start-ups and the percentage successful
3) Staffing and employment totals
4) Success stories

MCII has initiated partnership contacts with some financial and academic institutions as well as some government agencies in Ghana.

The resulting increases in employment, incomes, and consumption will have a multiplier effect leading to further investments, improvements in overall standards of living and reduction in poverty levels. Consequently, graduates of the country’s higher institutions will stay in the country to work contributing to its development. The experience they acquire will be applied to improve other sectors of the economy. The eventual economic growth and expansion of the economic will broaden the tax base. This will, in the long run, lead to a reversal of brain drain, as Ghanaians trained abroad return home in response to the growth in the economy. In terms of technology transfer, international businesses, sensing the new economic order in Ghana, will set up subsidiaries in Ghana to take advantage of the new economic infrastructure as well as the skilled manpower base. With increased productivity, Ghana will be able to export the excess production to earn foreign exchange to support further growth of the economy. With the reduction in emigration, the elderly and children would be properly cared for. Separation and divorce will be minimized since spouses will have gainful employment in their own African countries. Health care systems will be improved. Potential leaders will remain in their countries and put pressure for reform and social progress. There will be jobs in the villages; therefore, the urban cities will not be over-crowded by migration from the rural areas to the urban centers. Crime wave that has hit many African countries will diminish as employment increases.

MCII believes it can adequately address Ghana’s poverty and unemployment problems by turning the educated-unemployed into entrepreneurs.

We can be reached at: Gabriel Ayisi, EdD
President and Co-Founder
Email address: aysiga@netscape,net

Matthew Henry Sam Kuofie, PhD
CEO and Co-Founder
Email address: mhkuofie@msn.com