Digital marketing and communications consultant, Naasei Boadi, says news of Amazon and Twitter establishing in Ghana could mean a potential employment boom for the country.
The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, at a recent press conference, hinted at the development and added that it was part of the government’s plan to address youth unemployment in the country.
Mr Boadi stated that “In terms of jobs, there will be tens of thousands because they will run a 24-hour operation from logistics to call centre to data processing to all sorts of areas. So those opportunities could be there and these are jobs that are suitable for people who are in, for example, colleges and universities, so you can do part-time”.
Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and a prominent cloud services provider.
The company was originally a bookseller but has expanded to provide a wide variety of consumer goods and digital media as well as its own electronic devices, such as the Kindle.
In April this year, Twitter made a similar announcement that it would establish its Africa headquarters in the country.
But as these global digital brands make moves to pitch camp in Ghana, Naasei Boadi stated that the critical question of what the country stands to benefit from their presence must be answered.
According to him, if what the country stands to benefit from this development isn’t spelt out at the onset, Ghana could end up not benefiting in the end.
“The first question to ask them is, what kind of operations are you going to be running here? And based on that we might say we need so many jobs, for example, we will need you to source products locally.”
He also added that “What opportunities will be there, in terms of Amazon, for our retailers? What opportunities will be there for our tech people? All those questions need to be asked. And that’s why I’m saying we haven’t asked those questions in the past, but we need to start asking those questions.”