In a bid to remain competitive many businesses around the world are adopting innovative means to maximize their output and remain in operations.
Unfortunately, the use of outdated methods and services in many Ghanaian businesses has led to their eventual collapse after refusing to develop innovative means.
Speaking to Citi Business News ahead of Citi FM’s Innovation Summit, the Chief Operating Officer of Trotro Tractor Emmanuel Ansah Amprofi narrated how using innovative means has improved his operations.
“We were a group of young guys that met and we were asked to put together ideas that will transform the agric sector and that was when we came up with the idea making tractors accessible and affordable to the Ghanaian farmer and that was how trotro tractor was formed”, he recalled.
He added that Trotro Tractor was set on the idea of uber and it uses a special code to connect farmers to mechanized services.
According to him, the company works bases on a software programme.
“We currently have about a hundred and seventy two tractors in our data base the interesting thing is that we don’t own the tractors, individuals own them, organizations own them, you can say you want to invest in tractors, we will give you the software that monitors everything,” he expalined.
Mr. Amprofi was of the view that Trotro Tractor has transformed farming for many of his clients and eventually improved their standard of living.
“The feedback that we are getting is awesome, in Komenda per say where we spent most of our time doing the pilot, people were saying this thing should have come earlier, because it is available and accessible. They can plough more than they did and the yields are also improving,” he observed.
Not only does innovation help businesses thrive, it also serves as a catalyst for job creation.
Another young graduate who gave her name only as Naa told Citi Business News how she started her own business after spending all her savings retraining as a shoe maker with local artisans in Kumasi.
“There are so many shoe makers in Ghana but there are also so many people in the north that do not have shoes so I was in Kumasi and saw people using old car tyres for the sole of shoes and you know in the north there are beautiful materials .so I thought why not use some of the smock material as well as old jeans to design and make shoes for people,” she said.
From conception to packaging Naa stated that she deploys innovative means to producing world class shoes, which means making her own biodegradable paper bags instead of buying poly bags.
“Like I mentioned earlier, I am very passionate about sustainability so I went round looking for bags to put my shoe in and I remember there was a day I roamed and I didn’t know what the area was like so I walked back and forth looking for a biodegradable maker to make plastic bags for me but they all kept saying they could not make the quantity I wanted since my business was small and even with that the amount they were charging didn’t make sense for me to invest in so I ended up making them myself and that the beautiful thing about design it’s all about problem solving,” she noted.
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By: Anita Arthur/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana