A one-day training program was held in Accra to help 60 small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) develop the skills necessary to defend their brands from theft.
The Accra Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI), in collaboration with the Ghana Industrial Property Office, is holding the workshop in an effort to raise awareness of intellectual property as a tool for enhancing creativity and innovations.
Discussions on ways to advance and defend intellectual property rights in the nation and at the regional level, particularly in the framework of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area, were made available to participants (AfCFTA).
Running a business
The Chairperson of the chamber, Nana Agyenim Boateng, at a meeting in Accra on September 14, observed that running a business in the country keeps getting tougher and harder by the day.
“For this reason, I cherish every opportunity to network and engage with great minds like you here because by this, we learn off each other to grow our businesses.
“Today we get to tackle a very important topic critical to the future of our businesses, thus intellectual property,” he said.
He said the focus of the meeting would primarily be on industrial property rights which borders on the protection of investments in product development, brand or design and the exclusive rights to prevent others from using protected design or invention.
He said a lot of businesses have lost huge sums of money through unending legal tussles in a bid to protect what’s rightfully theirs.
“And now with the commencement of AfCFTA and subsequent opening of our markets to the whole continent, there could not have been a better time than now to train on intellectual property rights.
“For this reason, the chamber has invited personnel from the Ghana Industrial Property Office to lead us in this important discussion.
“Also, in the spirit of networking and doing business among ourselves, we have arranged a mini-exhibition to display member products and services outside. We encourage all of us here to take a stroll to their tables and patronise the items on display,” he said.
Building competencies
The Accra Regional Manager of the chamber, Daniel Osei Torgbor, in an interview with the Graphic Business after the meeting, stated that the programme offered opportunity for businesses to build up competitiveness and capacity to protect their products and services against theft with the advent of the single market.
He said the programme was part of the chamber’s monthly engagement with its members and as such were treated to topics of interest on how they could scale up their businesses and navigate through challenges.
“For this month, we are focusing on intellectual property to help members understand what intellectual property was all about,” he said.
Mr Torgbor said this would enable businesses to protect their products and services from being pirated.
“With the advent of AfCFTA, we thought that as our market is going to open, we need to secure our products against pirates,” the Regional Manager said.
