Reviews
User Score
Rate This
Descriptions:
When I think about innovation, I don’t think about big laboratories in Silicon Valley or skyscrapers in Singapore. I think about Ghana—about young people who refuse to be limited, about dreamers who look at problems and see possibilities, and about creators who turn everyday struggles into ideas the world has never seen before. Innovation is not something we import; it is something we grow. It is something we nurture in our communities, in our small shops, in our homes, in our frustrations, and even in our failures.
And that is the story I want to tell today.
A story about Ghana.
A story about innovation born from necessity.
A story about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Growing up in Accra, I witnessed a country full of potential but held back by challenges. Simple challenges—like sanitation, traffic, access to information, banking issues, agriculture, health. Problems that touched every home, every community, every person. For a long time, people complained. But then a new era emerged. An era of young innovators who stopped complaining and started creating. They looked at the same problems everyone else saw but chose to think differently. They asked one simple question: “How can I fix this?”
Let me start with a young man from Kumasi who transformed plastic waste into pavement blocks. Most people walk past plastic bottles, irritated by how they litter our streets and choke our gutters. But this young innovator saw raw material. He saw opportunity. Today, his recycled plastic pavement blocks are not only solving a Ghanaian problem—they are attracting interest from international environmental organizations. A local challenge turned into a global conversation.
And then there’s Ama, a digital creator from Cape Coast. She noticed how girls in rural communities struggled academically because they couldn’t access basic learning resources. Instead of waiting for someone to step in, she used her phone to create short, easy-to-understand educational videos. Mathematics, science, English—broken down into simple lessons anyone could learn from. Within months, her content travelled beyond Ghana, inspiring educators in Rwanda, Kenya, and Liberia. She didn’t need a fancy studio. She only needed purpose, creativity, and heart.
This is what I love about Ghanaian innovators—they do not wait for perfect conditions. They create solutions in the middle of chaos. They build in spite of challenges, not in the absence of them.
One day, I visited a small tech hub in Tamale. There, I met a group of young developers working on an app to help farmers predict rainfall. For years, farmers struggled because of unpredictable weather patterns. Harvests failed. Lives were affected. But these young innovators used data, satellite information, and artificial intelligence to create a simple dashboard farmers could understand. Today, that app is being studied by organizations beyond Africa because it addresses a problem the entire world is now battling—climate uncertainty.
When we say, “Made in Ghana,” we are not talking about only food, clothing, and crafts. We are talking about ideas. We are talking about innovation. We are talking about the Ghanaian spirit—creative, determined, resilient.
Sometimes people ask me, “Henry, why do you believe so much in Ghanaian innovation?” And I always answer the same way:
Because innovation grows where problems exist—and Ghana is full of problems waiting for the right minds.
Because we have a generation that refuses to be defined by limitations.
Because when Ghanaians innovate, they innovate with soul.
We are seeing filmmakers using documentaries to expose critical social issues—child labor, water scarcity, rural health challenges. These stories are not only sparking national conversations; they are attracting global attention. Influencers are using content to mobilize communities for clean-up campaigns, blood donations, and mental health awareness. Ordinary creators—armed with phones and purpose—are doing work policymakers sometimes struggle to do.
And let’s talk about fintech. If you want to see true innovation, look no further than mobile money. Ghana transformed the banking system without waiting for the traditional institutions to catch up. Today, other countries are studying our digital payment ecosystem because we turned a local need—accessible money—into a continental reference point.
