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GCG Newsletters
Newsletter Database - Latest Additions Listed First (sorted by : Date)
| Date |
Title |
| 11- 29- 2005 |
GE, GCG, Google Pursue Independent Projects in Ghana
The General Electric project complements IT ventures currently being pursued by Ghana Cyber Group, Inc. On November 18, 2005, Yaw Owusu, GCG Founder & Chief Executive, presented the Ghana Technology Park proposal at Columbia Business Schools 24th Annual BBSA Conference.
The tech park venture, which the United Nations has committed funding for, and has attracted the attention of a growing number of private firms, including Oracle Corporation, will be an upscale business and innovation center designed to (1) identify and develop early stage technology incubation opportunities, (2) assist client companies to commercialize their products and (3) broker contracts between buyers of outsourcing services (based primarily in Europe and North America) and information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) providers stationed at the Park.
In October 2005, Google committed $1 billion toward financing development projects in emerging markets. Among its first installment to anchor this initiative, Google immediately released half-a-million dollars last month to Technoserve to fund a comprehensive entrepreneur and business development program in Ghana.
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| 11- 29- 2005 |
Offshore Outsourcing: Servicing the Globe
The main challenge before our BPO sector is to move up the value chain, as competition at the lower end is likely to become fiercer, with entry of emerging economies like Ghana, Vietnam, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt.
The knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) sector, though small at present, according to Nasscoms recent analysis is expected to grow at 44% in the next five years. More important, billing rates here are $30-45 an hour as compared to $10-14 an hour for customer care services.
To grab a bigger pie of the global BPO cake, estimated at around $500 billion and growing at 10%, India needs to look ahead. One of the major tasks before Indian BPOs would be to develop a global delivery model and build multi-cultural and multi-lingual organisations. Like Tata Consultancy Services, other service providers too need to look at opportunities for establishing offices in several countries with a view to servicing global clientele, which include non-English speaking customers.
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| 11- 8- 2005 |
Columbia Business School: GCG to present tech park proposal
GCG will present the Ghana Technology Park proposal at the Emerging Markets panel at Columbia Business Schools 24th Annual BBSA Conference on Friday, November 18, 2005. The event will be sponsored by competing brokerage houses and investment banks, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank and Citigroupall potential financial partners of the Ghana Technology Park. A cocktail reception will follow the conference, starting at 7:00 pm.
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| 10- 31- 2005 |
Ghana Becomes IFC's Biggest Investment Destination in Africa
Private Enterprise Partnership for Africa is an extension of IFC's technical assistance and advisory work in Africa. It will continue to provide direct support for the development of SMEs and largely promote private sector development. PEP Africa will initially embark on development programmes in six sectors, with Ghana scheduled to receive over $200 million in investments, the single largest in Sub Saharan Africa.
Since IFC's inception in 1956 through 2004, it has committed more than $44 billion of its own funds and arranged $23 billion in syndications for 3,143 companies in 140 developing countries.
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| 10- 27- 2005 |
Discovery Documentary Showcases Ghanas Best
A premiere of GHANA: THE PRESIDENTIAL TOUR was also held on October 26 in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Phoenix, Oakland, New York and Seattle. In the film, journalist Forrest Sawyer accompanies the president as he showcases the countrys stock market, business district, people, culture and wildlife in Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, Sunyani, Paga and other parts of the nation.
Millions of potential viewers can see the film on November 8th when its shown on the popular American television outlet, the Discovery Travel Channel.
Later today, President Kufuor will promote investment in Ghana in a round-table discussion with U.S. business leaders at the United States Chamber of Commerce. The president is also scheduled to attend a dinner reception with senior business leaders of the Executive Leadership Council. Mr. Kufuor is the first African president to be hosted and recognized by the group.
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| 10- 27- 2005 |
Ghanaian President Woos US Investors
The World Bank recently named Ghana as one of the easiest places in Africa to do business. Well known American companies already taking advantage of the countrys investor-friendly economic climate include Coca-Cola, Chevron, IBM, Pfizer and Ralston-Purina.
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| 10- 17- 2005 |
CNN: Cell phones reshaping Africa
Cell phones made up 74.6 percent of all African phone subscriptions last year, says the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union. Cell phone subscriptions jumped 67 percent south of the Sahara in 2004, compared with 10 percent in cell-phone-saturated Western Europe, according to Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese who chairs Celtel, a leading African provider.
An industry that barely existed 10 years ago is now worth $25 billion, he says. Prepaid air minutes are the preferred means of usage and have created their own $2 billion-a-year industry of small-time vendors, the Celtel chief says. Air minutes have even become a form of currency, transactable from phone to phone by text message, he says.
This is particularly useful in Africa, where transferring small amounts of money through banks is costly. We are developing unique ways to use the phone, which has not been done anywhere else," says South African Michael Joseph, chief executive officer of Safaricom, one of two service providers in Kenya. For an impoverished continent, low-cost phones make "a perfect fit."
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| 10- 12- 2005 |
Google earmarks $1 billion for projects in the developing world
One nation that will benefit from this philanthropic effort will be Ghana where Google will undertake projects to help promote business efforts.
We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the worlds problems, Co-founder Sergey Brin wrote in the companys most recent annual report, echoing sentiments that Page first spelled out last year.
With more than a year of rapid financial growth behind it, Google has finalized the formula for calculating how much money will be devoted to philanthropy during the next 20 years. Even with the $1 billion commitment, Google.org will be dwarfed by other philanthropic efforts. Twenty foundations nationwide had more than $2 billion in assets through 2003, according to the latest statistic available from the Foundation Center, a group that tracks philanthropy. The list was topped by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which had $26.8 billion in assets. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, the worlds wealthiest man, bankrolled that foundation.
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| 10- 11- 2005 |
The Dawning Age of Mobile-Video Technology
Even though demand for TV over cell phones had taken off in Asia, it was still unproven in the U.S. What's more, the number of technologies for beaming video to wireless handsets was already on the rise. Investors wondered what would set MediaFLO apart -- and whether Qualcomm would ever break even on the estimated $500 million it would take to build the network.
Cingular has seen its video-user numbers surge with virtually no advertising. "It has been very popular, and that tells us that there's something there," says Rob Hyatt, executive director for mobile content at Atlanta-based Cingular, the largest U.S. wireless operator. Other providers, including Verizon Wireless, have joined the race to add customers intent on watching news, sports, and entertainment clips over their cell phones.
Mobile video is set to take the wireless industry by storm (see BW Online, 12/1/04 "TV Phones Prep for Prime Time"). The U.S. mobile video user base may balloon to more than 20 million by the end of 2007, up from less than 1 million today, says Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research (ATR). Assuming each subscriber pays $5 a month for such services, that would translate to a $1.2 billion market. Worldwide, more than 250 million people are expected to be watching mobile video by 2010, generating some $27 billion in sales, vs. with $200 million today, according to market consultant ABI Research.
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| 10- 11- 2005 |
Open Source: Profile of Industry Leaders
A flurry of open-source startups is coming on line. Here are profiles of some of the field's brightest sparks.
In 2003, venture capitalist Ray Lane was sitting in his office at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, talking to entrepreneur-in-residence Murugan Pal about enterprise software. Although Lane had spent much of his career in software and services -- including a stint as No. 2 to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison -- the truth was that he was bored by most of the potential business-software deals he was seeing.
But not open source. It was the one area he believed had limitless potential. Now that infrastructure providers like MySQL and JBoss were starting to emerge, applications outfits wouldn't be far behind, Lane mused. Instead of funding a company to develop applications, he decided what was needed was someone to put it all together for companies interested in using open-source programs.
Out of that discussion emerged SpikeSource. Lane and Pal tapped software veteran Kim Polese to run the company. Polese, in turn, has hired managers with strong open-source credentials, including Don Marti, former editor and chief of Linux Journal magazine. For SpikeSoure, which has raised $12 million in venture capital, these are critical appointments. How the open-source community perceives SpikeSource will be important, and people like Marti have the credibility to make sure the startup is seen as a partner, not a newcomer profiting from the innovation of others.
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