MAKING ENTREPRENEURSHIP SOCIAL

—a treat for all private enterprises to imbibing social concern!

By William Ayesu Nyarko

Primer:

Memoirs of a society

Nearly each dayspring, I fret over the virtual impossibility to change the
sorry being of my society. I know tapping my subconscious mind is much
unlikely, but also realize that the need for a change of circumstances across
the indigenes of my society could not be just lost into oblivion. I relive the
status quo of my community and country only to feel nothing but ache and
spite. Hope of fellow communal legions and mine, in the accomplishment of
developmental change goals incessantly mars with the passage of time 1.
Bribery and corruption scandals, environmental degradation concerns,
hunger and food safety problems, poor education, rife crime, hapless
healthcare delivery and prevalence of HIV/AIDS, TB etc override almost
every household; yet efforts of governmental bodies and major independent
entities nationwide can only afford but to make our trusts in them wane to
dregs!

Footing

Entrepreneurship— a seminally sublime non-solitary social tendency!

I have squarely observed how entrepreneurial manifestations around the world

influence expansive shifts in aggregate supply curves—hence enduing
entrepreneurial inspiration in many! If nothing, to say the least, the inferences I
have made from reading have sustained the notion of advocating economic
freedom and individual empowerment—a catalyst of sure growth and
widespread prosperity! Entrepreneurs are vectors who traditionally establish
renaissance in thinking and direct action to formulate novel means for wealth
and value creation. Over the years, this had been the only ‘imposed’ imperative
as of who an entrepreneur is mainly in the scope of prerequisite high school
knowledge. I always thought of this definition as quasi-complete in the core

1
Examples include the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Vision 2020 Goals pitched for attainment in the
years of 2015 and 2020 respectively.
 because it lacked the social facet.2 However, I have now found it easy to get
sufficiently nearer to understanding the crux of the issue, given the nascent
evidences on how the varied translations of neo-entrepreneurial resolutions lay
bare before me; thus pioneering my recent second sensations of having the
wont to present my outlook.

However, why have alleged entrepreneurs dismissed the social ‘cornerstone’ to such great
depths especially in my country where entrepreneurship is under-researched? 3 Can for-profit
entrepreneurs integrate a simulation of social mission element in their organizational goals to
provide a liaison with societal development whiles they work towards profit maximization? If
well founded, how can this be done?

The first step to solving every problem is correctly identifying and defining it. The following
concisely recounts on individual and public administrative glitches in stark need of attention in
order to curb or timely mollify to an optimum measure.

Socio-Developmental Challenges of My Community and Country

Over the years, Urbanization has become counter-productive in my country. The ‘urban
dream’ has patently proven to be compromising, killing progress by opening pathways for the
grappling competition of utility and overcrowding by all urban dwellers. 4 Crime rates have
plummeted to such tremendous degrees that there are, at least, two burglary cases per
fortnight in my community.

Apparently, though, Poverty has ever been the mother of all the challenges, wreaking havoc to
all nooks and crannies and paralyzing efforts made by many private businesses in my
community to grow; eventually trivializing the need for performance of corporate social
responsibility by them.

These aside, the other challenges include: Uncontrolled Waste and Environmental Pollution.
Thanks to Zoomlion Ghana Limited, many communities are conciliating with waste
management issues. Even that, I would give Ghana a three on a ten-unit national waste and
environmental control scale—a viable personal outlook which sounds all but sorrier. Rapid

2
In the Unternehmer, Joseph Schumpeter says of entrepreneurs as persons who “exploit an untried possibility…for
producing…by reorganizing the industry and so on”. By empirical data, I see a sheer analogy, in that, there is a
dialectical relation between spick-and-span entrepreneurship and the society i.e. entrepreneurship thrives in
milieus with good social standing and vice versa, hence my illation that entrepreneurship be social in the core.
3
For example, many NGOs, social service provision units, and social activism centers in my country think of
themselves as
social entrepreneurs, which is technically incorrect.
4
According to a commonplace research, a great deal of rural dwellers yen to enjoy the opportunities offered to
occupants of the urban metropolis’ in Ghana hence, the ‘Urban Dream’. Very like the Orients, Ghana’s numerous
rural-urban drifters reside in Compound Houses—the kind of housing my family and I live in— where there is an
enclosure of different households in one compound, sharing same toilet and bath, nook, patio and kitchen, if any.
population growth and unfettered urbanization have been the jumping-off point for this peril
as recent projections show.

Hunger and Sparse Supply of Potable Water: I have been fortunate enough to, seldom go to
bed hungry but such is worse with others in my community. What is more, it is not uncommon
to see me with my wheelbarrow and reservoirs following through ruts of long distances along
the streets in pursuit of potable water. Like my community, many societies in Ghana have
never seen the tap flow for years. The last time ours worked was before the floods in 1999.

Poorly Functioning Educational System and Illiteracy: According to a United Nations

Development Program report in 2009, Ghana ranks 153rd of the 179 countries surveyed, with
42.1% of its adult being illiterate—a study so pitiful I shudder to remark at many instances
(Wikipedia). It is discernible that we need change in our society; given the relatively paltry sum
of basic schools and the ramshackle nature within which most of them operate.

Prevalence of Major Diseases such as AIDS, Hepatitis, Malaria, Tuberculosis, etc: The United
Nations estimates that 2 million Africans die each year of AIDS, and 24 million of them have the
HIV virus (Wikipedia). Ghana is no exception hence my community may not be to, but for the
issue of stigmatization and discrimination, I would have known the right figures for discussion.

Corruption and Bribery: According to the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), Ghana’s corruption
index as at the end of 2009 was 3.9 units. Granted, the figure is relatively optimal to the
averages of the past years. Yet there is no promise of a better society with less corrupt
functionaries, if a corrupt-free society is inconceivable. The Mabey & Johnson and Ghana @50
secretariat scandals are a few of the social torts still on evaluation at the high courts of law of
Ghana.

Further reflections:

Economic Freedom in Uncertain Times exposes that Ghana is not economically free although
the author soft-pedals as ‘moderately free’!5 Ghana is fortunate enough to have found oil at a
time of efficient democracy. It is no news of how the ‘black gold’ has driven a great deal of
Nigerian nationals toward the abyss of chaos and copious massacre—owing to either mal-
structured resource management policies or sheer avarice by the officials. Still, the Ghana
government as now does not have an ossified oil policy! With just a few months left for the
120,000 barrels/day commercial production to go, all what the politicians wrangle about in
radio and on TV is overtly irrelevant to progress. The leaders have dragged their feet for long
upon indemnifying the society. One gets to see how evident most of them lack political will and
this is going to boil down to social unrest and mass developmental challenges in the end if not
addressed.
5
Authored by Ambassador Terry Miller, the book informs that Ghana’s measurement of economic freedom
ranges between 60 and 69.9 units.
Like every other third world country, Ghana’s poverty has afforded its people evolving banes
and ceaseless birth of new social enigmas so elaborate, thus cannot all be weighed in this
platform.

A couple of suburbia communities in Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi apparently confronted with the waste
pollution problems.

Source: A case study of Urban Environmental Problems in Ghana by Anthony Baabereyir .

MY ENTREPRENEURIAL TRIALS

As a socially oriented young individual, I have known many of the answers, as does many
logically inclined youth in my society. However, my personal efforts in 2006 and 2009 after
graduation from Junior and Senior High schools to acting on a revival of external socio-
environmental concern course ushered me into a sublime realm of understanding which
surpassed what answers would have given me. In Ghana, junior high school graduates stay at
home for a little over five months before they enter senior high school—, which is of
equivalence with the start of 9th grade in North America. In April 2006, my mum went for a loan
to start a shop of which I was going to be the keeper given the long vacation I had before me.
For the arid region in which we lived, my mum decided that 500-milliliter sachet drinking water
should be our merchandise. Four weeks into the start of the business, I realized the rate of
sachet bag pollution had increased in the territory of the shop’s premise. Therefore, I drew an
informal scheme for our bulk buyers of giving freely, five sachets of water per thirty used-
rubbers collected aground within the shop’s vicinity. In the offing, there was a positive
outcome; but three weeks after, matters reverted. A month later, I tried to involve my
mother’s business in this by expending certain resources in it—my working time, moneys for
clerical hard copies for awareness brochures and more. This I did not dare tell her because I
knew she would not consent due to paltry sum of the business’s marginal returns per diem.
Having come to the plenary realization that this fledgling action did not near nailing down just a
stifling aspect of the problem, I could not become more aware to be proactive to heed a flash of
concern to the state of being cast headlong into this seeming cul-de-sac. Hence, I took a bolder
step after completing senior high. This time I had a longer vacation to attend to accomplishing
my unfinished social mission. Hence, I applied for assistance at the local council since I saw no
indication of concern on their part to the issue of pollution in my community after the peak of
my awareness upon completing junior high. They obviously did not reply although the
institution’s chairman nothing but sounds progress-minded on the radio. I later on wrote and
personally submitted letters to two eco-centered NGOs in my community requesting them to
accept my voluntary offer of service. Someway, I hoped to brush up my entrepreneurial-cum-
humanitarian tendency of altruism by getting this employment however, I ostensibly hoped to
help in the pollution situation in my area. Surprisingly enough, my efforts ended up sleeveless!

The Chief Blockage

After my failure to make a change in my community concerning the pollution problem, I never
really blamed the institutions and myself yet I have not stopped exploring ways I could use to
help. In my country, one’s efforts becomes worthless if one lacks the necessary wherewithal—
money, status etc. That was exactly my chief problem because I fell short of them all. My
mother’s business also wounded up unfortunately due to same situation. As much as I do not
want to think the same for the institutions I contacted for not letting me offer the help they
have mostly failed to deliver since incorporation, I hugely think they face the same problem—
finances. This is the main challenge many entrepreneurs face in my country. Before they
would be able to show concern to the society, problem of finances had already expended all
vestiges of selflessness in them so bad so that one out of twenty of them would have
performed their laid-down policy of corporate social responsibility in 12 months!

It is merely logical a notion that to be externally responsible as a businessperson in Ghana, one

has to have a good financial precursor to be too concerned to show care to the world around
his/her business. It can now be adequately inferred why the social cornerstone has been
ignored from this standpoint!

Notwithstanding, lack of finances should be too scrimpy a ground to ignore a problem which
has taken more from us than what the staunchest pessimist would have foreordained for a
society like mine. Sometimes, I would just think that maybe this world is some other planet’s
hell given the longstanding repercussions that beset us all! However, I never let escape my
immediate thoughts what Scott Peck said that, “social problems do not go away; they must be
worked through or else they would remain forever as barriers to growth and development of
the society and country at large.”6 The government is obviously not finding calm in placating
the social problems that many Ghanaian societies face. Hence, ‘to work through them’, I think
6
Italics mine.
it is imperative to realize that private businesses do not have to be economically stable to be
able to pay social heed. This is the time for us as youth to gird up our loins and focus on
executing the remedies by turning the aforementioned barriers into bridges rather than finger
pointing the transgressors [which we have time-honorably done for far too long].

To creating a prosperous society, I have coined the youth-seconded entrepreneurial treats into
two approaches: Basic and Peripheral Approach—, which would assure a copper-bottomed
paradise for my community and country if best actualized.

Basic Approach

This approach epitomizes the concept that, although private participation in social problems
comes in handy, some social problems are better solved by private sector backing of the
government. Rather than full private control, optimal private sector limitation can sometimes
best define the major essence of the government to societal development no matter how
positive the extreme private ownership of factors of production can do for nationwide social
advancement. Nevertheless, the opposite could be true whereas a harmonious synergy of both
could as well yield progressive upshots. The following launches the three core values of the
basic approach, which private enterprises should undertake immediately. They are:

a. Direct Action,
b. Awareness creation and
c. Ardent action for prompt action mostly on the part of private enterprises when the
social problem resolution is best executed by the government:

KEY INTERPRETATION
↑ Best execution through direct action
— Best realization through awareness creation and ardent activism for prompt action for either laid
down government and/or other private enterprises to follow
SYN Synergy—harmonious integration of ↑ and — by both private and public enterprises

Problem Procedure How?

Urbanization Design and devise a petrified urban and rural ↑—SYN
housing policy, which should not change with
change in governments—A type of housing which
should be optimally resourced to afford the
residents with decent, comfortable and non-
overcrowded.
Donation to disadvantaged parties. ↑—SYN
Crime Dissemination of what makes criminal offences as ↑—SYN
spelt out in the constitution since most Ghanaians
are mostly misinformed or completely ignorant
about torts.
 Lawfully meting out punishment to offenders. —

Environmental Pollution Devising, and lawfully enforcing concrete —SYN

environmental laws.
Campaigning for good socio-environmental
practices like communal cleaning and
afforestation. ↑—SYN
Campaigning against bad environmental practices
like refuse dumping at unauthorized sites, littering
etc. ↑—SYN

Health and Disease Education of the public about the causes and ↑—SYN
Prevalence effects of stigmatization, rife health deficiencies
and diseases like AIDS, Malaria, TB, Cholera etc
Provision of nationwide health insurance and —
affordable health
Free or budget distribution of drugs, vaccinations
and immunization services, mosquito nets, ↑—SYN
condoms etc
Construction of health facilities ↑—SYN
Corruption and Bribery Public membership to organizations concerned —
with diminishing the spate of corruption, like the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) and internally creating many
of such organizations.
Enforcing proper checks and balances ↑—SYN
Social and Economic Policy Ensuring timely and rightful formulation of policies
Making for national resources and societal development. ↑—SYN
Making SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY a law, which is
punishable if not performed in a specified time.
Use of moral suasion to appeal to all private
enterprises on the need for social benefits attained
from them.
Illiteracy and Education Advocating and re-enforcing Free Compulsory
Universal Basic Education (FCUBE). ↑—SYN
Designing a stable educational system for pre- —
tertiary students
Provision of educational logistics ↑—SYN
Donation to disadvantaged parties. ↑—SYN

Rapid Population Growth Campaign against rapid population growth and ↑—SYN
remarking its overriding negative effects to social
development. ↑—SYN
Informing the public of family planning methods
↑—SYN

Potable Water Supply Timely and equitable production and distribution —

of potable water to every community by
 widespread pipe-borne water production and
drilling of bore holes. ↑—SYN
Repair of spoilt and faulty plumbing-related
problems. ↑—SYN

Peripheral Approach

Principles of Microeconomics by Robert Frank and Ben Bernanke speculates, “Society will be
more successful if its institutions encourage citizens to pursue activities that create wealth
rather than activities that merely transfer existing wealth from one person or company to
another.”

This approach centralizes on the internal operations of a private enterprise to create a milieu,
which would stimulate a remarkable responsiveness to social issues.

They include:

 Research in the field of entrepreneurship

 Internal re-evaluation of economic stability to face the immediate social world

 Entreating private enterprises in making “rational decisions explicitly or

implicitly based on weighing the costs and benefits of them,” as contended by
the above-mentioned book.

 Encouraging private businesses to make social responsibility an essential

portion of their goals.

Conclusion

Thanks to capitalism’s well-disposed promise, entrepreneurship could be re-structured and re-

conceptualized to accord the needs of my society. Many youths I have known have expressed
same, that with progress-oriented dispatch and decent exuberance, which we possess, we can
work through the cores of entrepreneurship to salvage our wretched society. Whether
through, moral suasion or lawful cohesion, private enterprises can integrate a social mission in
their laid goals to improve the society!