| Five things to do |
Kakum National Park
The park is situated in one of the last rainforests in the world. It is one of Ghana's biggest attractions with its eight lengths of suspension bridge in the top canopy of trees. If you are up for an adventure, you can arrange to camp overnight in the park, and have a guide take you on an early morning hike through the rainforest in search of animals. |
National Museum
The museum features in most travel guides to Ghana. The most fascinating exhibits are those detailing the history and meaning of the various symbols used on woven cloth, chiefs’ stools and printed cloth. There is also a wonderful section with chiefly regalia, including robes, stools and swords. |
Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum
The Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and memorial park is located in downtown Accra. It is dedicated to the prominent Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah. |
Slave Castles
They were the central location for the slave trade. A tour through the building takes you through the slave areas, governor's quarters, balcony, sanctuary, and all the other parts of the museum. There are fishing boats all around the area, and it is right on the coastline so there are some awesome photographic opportunities. |
Makola Market
It is a renowned market place and shopping district in the center of the city of Accra. It is currently under the observation of Transaid, which is developing a project Transport and Trade for Market Women, which is designed to improve the livelihoods and security of female market traders through the development of Women’s Transports Co-operatives in Accra. |
However, from an African perspective, call centers could give the continent the chance to use some of its untapped potential and allow it to muscle its way into the global outsourcing business. That is, the economic rewards to Ghana that comes out of pursuing call-center work out of Accra are significant enough that the country should direct attention to maximizing the opportunity.
Astonishingly, some 1,600 people in Accra work day and night transferring U.S. health-insurance information from filled-in forms to computerized databases. New York parking tickets have been coming all the way to Ghana for processing too.
This is of course the low-end work. But Ghana’s entrepreneurs have their eyes on the sorts of call-center work currently being done in India. They can do it, they claim, for half the price in India, if the U.S. and maybe European companies will entrust their business to Africa.
Interestingly, Accra boasts about 500 Internet cafes, roughly six times as many as London, signaling a strong Internet connectivity to help it to carry out the call-center work. But observers who are more cautious are skeptical to whether Accra will really attract large-scale businesses and fear that the window of opportunity has already been lost.
And thus, the Ghana government is putting great emphasis on IT as an agent of growth and a savior of its stagnating economy. The Ministry of Communications has also transformed the former GNTC Ghana House into a high-tech Incubation Center that is currently offering training in call-center management and medical transcription and other requirements for BPOs in readiness for companies that would want to take advantage and locate in Ghana.
Q&A
Opened in Sept. 2000, ACS Accra facility was built with the purpose of becoming the single largest location of workers in West Africa. Adyasha Sinha spoke to an ACS spokesperson about the company’s journey in Accra
How has your Accra center scaled up?
ACS has grown both its employee and customer base, and is currently the largest technology services employer in Accra. We started out here with just 60 employees in the center, which has now grown to nearly 1,400. Today, we are the second-largest employer in Ghana.
What are the services that you offer from this center?
The Accra site provides transaction-processing support to a variety of customers and supports the health care, communications, insurance and consulting industries.
So what were the opportunities that brought you here?
Ghana is very ripe as an outsourcing destination. The Government has shown tremendous commitment to the course of this industry by providing the needed framework and infrastructure development to facilitate the operations of the players in the industry. English is the official language and the location of the country makes it a perfect proximity to Europe and the US. Although unemployment is high around 25 percent, but this has created a situation which results in very low attrition rates. Labour cost is also quiet competitive and comparable to those is Asia.
Did you face any challenges in Accra?
The challenges that we faced are common among all the providers in Ghana. Real estate is expensive here, however, there are various real estate facilities that can be re-modeled and appropriately used for the same purpose. The major set-up challenges one is likely to face in Ghana today are just a few bureaucracies with obtaining the appropriate licenses as well as delays in the physical installation of telecoms.
Many African cities are now evolving on the outsourcing radar. But the least visible on this radar is the capital city of Ghana, Accra. The essence of this place lies in the fact that it is in a developing country, where most things are yet to be done, and this in itself represents an opportunity. 
