Nana Kofi Acquah, Accra, Ghana
After a hot drive through some of Accra's most traffic jammed nooks and crannies, I finally get to meet Ms. Patience Atta-Prempeh, CEO of Black Park. A business that sells building equipment, targeted at corporate clients.
The fluent English accent and contemporary look made her look out of place to me… till we got to business. Pat simply describes herself as a wife and mother of four- a boy and three girls aged 20,18,15 and 12 respectively. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Banking and Finance from the University of Ghana (2002) and is currently pursuing an MBA from GIMPA. She has no time for hobbies but if she had the time, she would just be by herself, away from the madding crowd and read.
Business starts with iced water
After all… it has been a long journey that started when she was just 10. School had vacated and she was home alone with her siblings when an idea struck her: “Why don’t I go and sell some iced water? I could make some money!”.
Her parents returned home from work that day to meet a joyful Pat. Her first day at business has been successful. Luckily for her, her parents neither scolded her nor collected her money. So she took that as a sign to continue her business.
She says “we had no financial problems at home or anything. I just wanted to sell”.
Bigger business
The iced water business grew into selling silk thread (used for plating hair), cutlery, robb and other uncountable items till she was fifteen. By fifteen she felt old enough to launch into bigger business so she started buying bails of GTP Cloth and School Uniform fabric from her mom and selling.
“I will even travel to Hohoe, in the Volta Region to collect my mother’s consignment of fabric and bring it to Accra”. “I made so much money” she recalls. As with every good story, the plot turns somewhere.
Military coup spoils business
Pat’s was in 1979, when "Brother Jerry" and his cohorts came into power by the barrel of the gun. The memories are even still sour for the rich of that era…and teenager Pat was also affected. Her mother was affected too. They lost their shop and had to go home jobless.
These were the “kalabuley” days in Ghana. She was still in school and managed to graduate from the polytechnic and took a job at the Transport Department of the then, GNTC.
Back to business
Uncomfortable with the corruption and laziness that saturated the office, she started looking for other opportunities. One came her way in a Military uniform.
"This army officer, I can’t remember his name now, would always come to my office to rent one of the “articulators” (long vehicle) to transport yams".
So she jumped into the business with him. “Sometimes I’d buy the whole truckload from the soldier and would use my Friday afterwork, Saturday and Sunday to sell it all off at the Kaneshie Market”.
Business was good again and she decided to add some trips to Lagos. “I will travel to Lagos, buy slippers and other stuff and come and supply the market women to sell. After two weeks, I will go and collect my money… till one day, one of the Ahwois, I don’t remember which one, announced that all goods at the airport had been seized. The funny thing is they brought the goods to GNTC. So my goods were locked next door to my office and yet I couldn’t go for them. That was when I decided to travel.
The American dream
In 1985, Pat joined her siblings in California but with the determination that she was never going to do any menial job. Her first job interview went sour because she was computer illiterate. Her second interview went well but her accent was incomprehensible to American ears… so her employer was kind enough to place her in the back office to work on data entry.
Back home for business
After five years of pursuing the American dream working as an Executive Secretary to a group of architects in Marriot Hotels, head quarters, she decided to come back home. The shop her cousin had abandoned was the very one she came to manage. She says: “with excellent customer service, hard work, a good return policy and working smarter, today, Black Park stands formidable”.
‘My biggest challenge is Human Resource’
“The Chinese are becoming a problem but my biggest challenge in this business is Human Resource, not even the Chinese. I consider the Chinese to be competitors and if I had the right team, we could beat them… but I don’t know what the Universities are churning out nowadays. Actually I have vowed never to let any of my children go to the University of Ghana because of what I saw there when I was a student in 2002. So my son is at Ashesi University.”
Pat's calls Africa a continent of immense opportunity: An emerging economy and encourages young women to not look for jobs, but to create jobs. She lists good education, honesty, hard work and the need for a mentor as the keys to financial success.
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