Ghana Made

In my line of work at my 9-5 we import a lot of what raw materials we use.
Recently the Ministry of Agric has brought new regulations about providing permits for individuals and companies to import meat products. Apparently now all importers are entitled to one permit per quarter and maybe even alot certain quotas. Now I'm still struggling to fully understand the new regulation but what I know is that it's supposed to encourage purchasing of locally produced animals and meat products in order to boost the animal production sector. This  is a long overdue move since the animal production sector has been crying for such regulations for decades now. My problem is if the actual background work to ensure that the local industry can support the demand  that this regulation will bring.

Now to what I want to talk about, so the government seems to slowly (and ever so slowly) getting into supporting those local industries that need to be promoted, but are the industries helping themselves.
As my 5-9 I work with a team of creatives at a digital firm where we produce music videos among other multimedia products. If you all remember recently some Ghanaian musicians were "crying" over why foreign and for that matter Nigerian artistes were being paid more money to headline shows than they local artiste were. For the most part Ghanaians  supported them in this fight arguing out the importance of valuing our own. You must therefore understand my displeasure with the growing trend of Ghanaian artiste choosing to pay Nigerian and South African video directors hefty amounts of money to produce videos for them. Some of these videos even turn out not being worth the amounts paid.

Ghanaian video makers like Phamous, NKACC, David Nicole-Sey, X Bills, Big OJ, Prince Dovlo, Pascal Aka, OM, George Freeman, Clockwork media, Lex MacCarthy, are doing some awesome work and producing video that can face off with any of the so called big directors from Naija and S.A. Videos like Edem's The One, Chases Pulling me down, DeeMoney's Finish Line (the original) and so many more are well produced well thought out videos that can stand the test.

My problem is in most cases you see these Ghanaian artiste pay huge amounts to these foreign directors  for videos that they could have gotten in Ghana for less, and then turn around and cry about not having money when Ghanaian directors give them budgets for videos. . How do you want to be treated in one way and treat your fellow artist in the same way your are crying foul about.

Now don't misunderstand  me, I'm all for globalization and exposing yourself to what is out there, but what use is that if you don't build your house. If our musicians cry foul about playing second fiddle to Nigerian and S.A. musicians why should they behave likewise towards Ghanaian video directors.
Why should you expect to pay less for similar quality video just because they are Ghanaians. After all they use the same equipment, same cameras and in quite a number of cases produce even better work.

This attitude pervades through all of our lives as Ghanaians. We cry buy made in Ghana when it suits us, then go looking for foreign good to show that we have "arrived".

Most musicians cry about there not being a music "industry" in Ghana. Well maybe if we spent a little more of that money to pay producers, proper managers and agent, video directors, dancers and all i Ghana, maybe then we will start to build an industry.