John Mahama
“The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential…these are the keys that will unlock your true potential” – Confucius
I was privileged to interact a couple of days ago with a wine dealer named Franz Exume, an African-American, over some discussions not quite related to wine. Franz was in town to open a winery shop along the North Labone-Cantonments-Kofi Baako stretch.
The name of his wine business venture is Everything Gourmet Wines, and is a distributor for California-based Bronco Winery, the largest wine producers in the US.
Interestingly, not only was the ceremony very well attended, there was hope and promise that the venture will do well – without going the way typical Ghanaian enterprises go.
By the close of the seemingly ordinary discussions, he and I had leaped notches in knowledge in a couple of fields, enough to equip me to put together ideas that have potential to generate good, sustainable business, if I were committed as a business person interested in improving myself and that of the society in which I live in creating jobs.
Franz had told me that following some insightful research he had made into wines and dishes, he came to the scientific conclusion that it is not enough to take just wine – red, white, cream etc – just for the sake of it, particularly with just any food. Food types, whether it is waakye, fufu and ‘light soup’, banku and okro stew or soup; or jollof rice and fried rice, have a corresponding wine type. And, according to him, there is a chemistry behind which wine should go with which meal.
If you are therefore taking beef or red meat, be sure, he advised, to take red wine; and white wine, if you are taking fish in soup or sauce, etc. And, for your popular waakye meal, which contains spices because of the pepper or stew, you need to take a certain wine type in the same manner that your fufu should tolerate a certain wine type.
Very fortunately, I was told, the media was around to cover the programme and disseminate this very vital and revealing information. Additionally, the location of business was very strategic.
Lessons
My excitement and, more importantly, his was the news that, that bit of seemingly ordinary researched information resulted in his partners in California, who didn’t know that before, committing their company to help my friend expand his distribution network in the sub-region where dishes abound.
It is evident that what appeared to be an ordinary winery to the ordinary person, because of some research value addition, is now poised to assume a sub-regional business dimension, several times greater than the inauguration story which was wired to the producers of the wine about Ghanaian dishes and their chemistry with Californian wine.
That was deep thinking, quality vision, research and unalloyed commitment to doing something outside the box, resulting in that something exceptional leapfrogging an almost insignificant Ghanaian company to astonishing heights. Significantly, the Franz story has drawn attention to ingredients in eating and hosting which we didn’t know before.
This is basic scientific development, the lack of which culminates in drudgery in our part of the world in the manner lack of effective policy in Nigeria, for several decades, has bred deep-seated tribal violence in which Boko Haram has found turf and opportunity to infest streets, communities, districts, regions and whole states because they failed in managing grazing and farming lands.
The winery inauguration means that the next time I am at the Labone Coffee Shop, which is not too far from the wine shop, I would be minded to check the chemistry of the food I order, and ensure that it conforms to the wine type that enhances my health.
Message
Beyond the business issues, I was quick to draw inferences on recent incidents and debate on the political turf in Ghana, particularly the vehement argument that is doing the media rounds that the opposition National Democratic Congress actually did a research that informed them that one of the crying needs of Zongos or Muslims in Ghana is not lavatories, decent accommodation, schools and health centres, jobs or proper sanitation, but morgues, in the already tight and underprivileged communities.
I haven’t slept ever since I heard both experienced politicians and ignorant young university graduates insisting that the NDC research was concrete, true, relevant and almost infallible; and that they owe no one an apology – though a couple of Muslim clerics who heard the NDC still think their [clerics] ears may be deceiving them.
However, the more important reading of the relationship between the food and the wine lies in how businesses or partnerships relate and jell well based necessarily on certain chemistry. And I ask myself which global partners or development entities the Mahama administration could jell with, when their vision, argument, debate and political leaning look very absurd and awkward, against set and known development standards.
We can also make that same argument for public transport and say they failed in enhancing public transport because they see Okada as a solution when research show that it puts lives of motor-bikers themselves to huge risk in a nation where our insurance systems need an overhaul and routes for Okada have not been part of the architecture to warrant a bill of health for Okada riders.
Record
Probably, the greatest risk the NDC is putting itself and the nation to is that it forgets that the whole world is watching. And, the global community may now be apprising themselves as to the reason why, under a Mahama administration, cash can be flown in chartered planes to pay footballers and government officials because it is easy, for instance, for a President to skip the system and take cuts in aircraft deals behind his Cabinet in our part of the world. And, such occurrences query how lawless the Executive can be under a presidency like Mahama.
These are aside of the fact that a country that grew eight per cent under a former President downgraded itself, scoring three from a succeeding President, after the first died – because the successor had a different political agenda, which again allows for political clowning and skewing of the systems for personal profit until that President is forced out of office in the Election 2016 style.
And we wonder what kind of governments and developing partners John Mahama’s administration would be working with, in the unlikely event that he won the 2020 general elections, when the NDC continually and shame-facedly tell the world in the face, by their ridiculous and hollow Manifesto, that policy doesn’t matter, as long as “the masses” get what they want illegally.
Let’s remember that it is no longer about clowning and barking or acting sentimental; it is about how we show by our systems and structures that we are a credible nation and are able to attract global businesses and business partners in the same manner my friend’s enterprise, Everything Gourmet Wines, proved to its partners that it is a serious and research-conscious distributor.
The difference
While I pity the barking, ignorant boys who are buying into the Okada and Galamsey Manifesto, I still hope that they politically get “born again” like the teeming youth in the Oti Region and other communities, including Ejura and Alhaji Muntaka’s Asawase Zongo.
So that we are not sold ashes for sugar, I believe it should be the prayer of every parent that his children should not fall into the temptation of fighting among themselves tomorrow over Okada – when their class mates in JHS, SHS or the universities and elsewhere in Africa are dreaming bigger, digital, global and post-COVID 19 inventions.
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