Suame artisans grateful to UNIDO

The Suame Magazine Industrial Development Organization (SMIDO), an umbrella organisation and development wing of Suame Magazine has expressed appreciation and embraced the offer by United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) to provide US$24million to support business at the Suame Magazine in Kumasi.
The Director-General of UNIDO, Dr Kandeh Yumkella, made the offer known when he paid a courtesy call on President J.A Kufour at the castle last week.
Already a feasibility study on the business investment and facility support for the project has been completed.
The Suame Magazine, which was established in the 1930s, is composed of a cluster of artisans engaged in vehicle repairs and metal works. It has over 12000 enterprises and more than 100,000 mostly young artisans.
The promotion of business investment and facility support at the Suame Magazine is part of the Millenium Citites Initiative (MCI) being implemented by UNIDO.
When the Daily Graphic asked Mr. Nyaaba-Aweeba Azongo, the consultant to SMIDO about the expectations of the organisation in the wake of the UNIDO facility, he said among the immediate priorities would be building the institutional and entrepreneurship capacity of artisans and setting up of common facility centres.
He added that a particularly attention would be paid to the establishment of the Suame Tech Automatics Engineering Institute (STAEI Project), as well as the Industrial Village Project through which SMIDO has successfully negotiated for a 1000acre land at Asonomaso.
Mr Azongo said SMIDO has greatly been inspired by UNIDO’s gesture, but said they are cautious not to prejudge its outcome since its mode of management and dispensation was yet to be unveiled before the primary beneficiaries, the artisans.
He said development was a complex exercise, financial flows and investments were important and added that the success of every intervention was decisively dependent on the mode, contextual efficacy and comprehensiveness involved in the planning, management and utilisation.
He said the over reliance on conventional centralised command structures for implementation of projects has not been groundbreaking enough to challenge sustainable poverty eradication.
He therefore expressed the hope that there would be sufficient scope in the current facility to accommodate an appropriate blend of institutional development and the physical component development.
“SMIDO hopes the facility will mirror and not bypass SMIDO’s mission, institutional system and operational philosophy of Assisted Self-Reliance Strategy”, Azongo said.
According to him Suame Magazine being the leading cluster in Africa and the first to benefit from such a facility coupled with its development should be seen as a forerunner to pilot the best operational concept and financial investment model for the rest of the clusters in Africa.
“I believe if these primary development issues are well-rehearsed on board the UNIDO intervention, the project would emerge as the best showpiece of sustainable development and poverty eradication through wealth creation in Ghana.”
Mr. George Asamoah Amankwa, the President of SMIDO on his part said SMIDO was very grateful to UNIDO, the Government of Ghana, the Millennium Cities Initiative and all the stakeholders who have played diverse roles in ensuring the provision of the facility.
This facility would be utilised in ways and on such terms that will ensure the realisation of the ultimate goal of turning Suame Magazine into a technologically advanced industrial estate.
SMIDO has had good relationship with UNIDO and the Millennium Cities Initiative project. SMIDO has been captured in the MCI’s and UNIDO’s Kumasi Investment Guide, which was launched recently in Kumasi.
Mr Amankwa called on all the artisanal groups in the country to identify with SMIDO in order to benefit from the development expertise and policies of SMIDO to champion a common cause for artisans in the country.