• A Rose Among Thorns

    Born on 17th September 1952 in Sakyikrom near Nsawam in Ghana’s Eastern Region, Dr. (Mrs.) Felicia Boateng Danquah (nee Akotua) is the third of five children born to her parents, Mr. Jonas Akotua and Mrs. Clara Akotua.

    Due to her father’s regular transfers arising out of his employment with the Ghana Health Service, she was educated in different parts of the country, including Walewale and Bolgatanga, before entering the Komenda Teacher Training College (as it was then), where she trained as a teacher. She worked for some time with the Ghana Education Service as a teacher before going into business full-time.

    A devoted Christian and Vice President of Jofel Catering Services in Kumasi, Dr. (Mrs) Danquah is married to Lt. Gen. J B Danquah, Ghana’s Chief of Defence Staff from 2005 to 2009 and President of Jofel. The couple have six children.

    The year 2022 serves as a confluence of an important trilogy in Dr (Mrs.) Danquah’s life − her 70th birthday anniversary, the 50th anniversary of her marriage and the 40th anniversary of Jofel, one of the most iconic institutional names in Kumasi and an undoubted leader in the catering and hospitality business in the city and beyond.

    In this fascinating, yet simple, easy-to-read publication to mark these important landmarks in her life, the author recalls her early childhood experiences and family, particularly her mother Clara, who she adores, and shares the story of Jofel and its evolution to what it is today.

    She also shares her perspectives on the values she treasures that she believes have helped her enormously in her Christian faith, her marriage and family, and in building an award-winning business with the support of her family, among others.

    A Rose Among Thorns speaks to the challenges of life that most of us can identify with and seek inspiration from in the knowledge that our lives can flourish like the rose even among the thorns of life with God as our helper and beacon.

  • Pilgrims of the Night: Development Challenges and Opportunities in Africa (Hardcover)

    Africa’s development process has and continues to be like walking through a thick forest made obscure by institutional weakness, social challenges and capacity gaps. Sustainable development should be in the hands of Africans and outside support as a critical compliment. Getting the navigation right is paramount in the face of emerging challenges so well covered in this undoubtedly important and highly recommended book. The authors argue that Africa must control its own precious natural resources, reform its government institutions, modify its trade and economic relations and form new relationships with emerging economies in order to improve conditions on the continent.

  • Africa in Search of Prosperity

    Africa is a major player in global economic engineering. It is also a great development partner, a vital player in the economies of Asian nations who are eager to explore long awaited market possibilities that it presents by forging alliances with hi-growth emerging economies in Africa.

    This new economic order is shifting the developmental narratives as Africa’s rich potential market has become more attractive with a population of nearly one billion.

    The author of this book is a long time transnational business executive. Although he indicates a level of despair at times, he is quite hopeful of Africa’s prospects. His lived experience as an economist and policy advisor to Presidents, is reflected in these essays that address developmental issues from the colonial economy with those of the new states.

    In this, the author uses the experience of Ghana as an example and a site for an analytical perspective. He examines and writes about the issues of natural resource exploration, the oil economy, human skills and also looks at the vital factors of education, religion and the attendant attitudes to development.

  • The Consultant

    **Available from 23 June, 2022

    Consider this book the ultimate ‘How To’ compilation on a work area which has become extremely popular and lucrative in recent years — Consulting. The content of this book reflects the Author’s personal and professional consulting experience spanning over forty years, on work that has taken him to various African countries, the United Kingdom, the USA and Singapore.

    This book’s primary objective is to share the experience of a seasoned professional to promote Consulting as a vocation. It can truly be described as a manual and a set of guidelines for all Consultants. It particularly targets aspiring and young practicing individuals in the field.

    The Author, Dr. Joseph E. Bannerman, describes his work journey so far with his firm, Plan Consult, as exciting , full of dynamic encounters with a host of professionals from different backgrounds, government ministries, departments and organisations within both the public and private sector. His work has resulted in new and reviewed policies of various national sectors to the greater advantage of the beneficiaries of his expertise, of which he is most proud.

    The structure of this book adopts a ‘Project Planning Approach’ which the author calls ‘The Consulting Cycle’ and reinforces its credentials as one’s go-to ‘How To’ directional guide on Consulting. The arrangement of the chapters reflect the rich life experiences of the Author and follows his journey step by step to organically take the reader through advancing progressively in their consulting career.

    The Consultant

    250.00
  • 6 Deadly Sins of Business

    The “6 Deadly Sins of Business” explores avoidable mistakes that once-flourishing corporate giants made that cost them. More importantly, it recommends how business leaders can avoid falling prey to these six sins. The truth is that, any of the sins can be avoided once a company’s senior leadership will heed the principles therein this book. The author emphasizes the fact that, leadership matters! This book is specifically intended to navigate you and your team through the tough cycles of business management.

  • Failing To Win: Hard-Earned Lessons from a Purpose-Driven Startup

    In 2009, Canadian entrepreneur Mike Quinn packed his backpack and moved to Lusaka, Zambia on a mission to find African entrepreneurs building scalable, high-impact businesses. There he stumbled across two South African brothers who had founded a business to help unbanked smallholder farmers receive mobile payments in a market where cash was king. After convincing his retired parents to mortgage their house and lend him $100,000, Mike joined as a co-founder of Zoona and became CEO for nine of the next ten years.

    With his partners, Mike built a network of more than 3,000 entrepreneur agents across Zambia and Malawi that enabled millions of unbanked consumers to send and receive $2.5-billion in money transfers and remittances. Headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, Zoona raised over $35-million of venture investment and operated on the leading edge of Africa’s emerging fintech ecosystem.

    Mike’s remarkable story gives a rare and honest glimpse into the workings of a pioneering African startup through the lens of a purpose-driven entrepreneur who went “all in”. Zoona faced tremendous adversity along the way: currency crises, investment round collapses, ruthless pushback from the major mobile network operators, and a continuous internal struggle to discover and execute a growth strategy that matched the company’s billion-dollar ambition. It was by failing to win that Mike learned what entrepreneurship is all about, and it was what motivated him to double down and try again.

    “This raw, honest account is a must-read for anyone thinking about starting a company and for every entrepreneur who feels alone in the journey.” — Elizabeth Yin, Co-Founder & General Partner of Hustle Fund

    “Startups are hard. Most people understand this. However, most people don’t understand why. Mike’s story is a rare glimpse into how challenges present themselves — and ultimately how to overcome.” — Matt Flannery, Co-Founder of Kiva & Branch

    “In a rare look behind the scenes, Mike shares a vivid picture of the other side of leadership we don’t talk about enough. As he aptly describes ‘founding, failing and winning’, this book highlights the risk of taking that all-important first step, embracing failure and ensuring you learn the transformative lessons critical to success as an entrepreneurial leader.” — Fred Swaniker, Founder of African Leadership Group

    “This story is a gift for entrepreneurs and indeed anyone wanting to learn about the first generation of African fintechs that paved the way for future companies to thrive.” — Katlego Maphai, Co-Founder & CEO of Yoco

    “Mike’s humility, resilience and depth of knowledge of how to build a pan-African business are unique, and his testimony of experience is an important short history of the fintech boom on the continent.” — Elizabeth Rossiello, Founder & CEO of AZA

    “Failing To Win is a captivating account of an incredibly talented and unusually forthright entrepreneur who built an ambitious purpose-led company that started in Zambia. At Oxford I have taught the Zoona case study to countless MBA students to show how fundamental principles of entrepreneurship can be meaningfully applied in a novel context. It just takes courageous and smart individuals who are not afraid of failing (in order) to win.” — Thomas Hellmann, DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Oxford’s Saïd Business School

    “Innovation has gone global, and is transforming people’s lives around the world. But startups are risky. Sometimes they scale and sometimes they fail. In Failing To Win, Mike shares insightful lessons from his journey at Zoona about what it takes to operate with integrity, impact and inspiration in the new Frontier of Innovation.” — Alex Lazarow, Author of Out-Innovate: How global entrepreneurs – from Delhi to Detroit – are rewriting the rules of Silicon Valley

    145.00160.00
  • How to Raise Capital for your Start-up Business

    The most important skill for every aspiring entrepreneur to develop is to be able to raise capital for your start-up business.

    The book serves as a complementary knowledge in building this very important skill which will ultimately help to grow start-ups to big companies that will contribute to economic development.

    This book also serves as a motivational book for this generation of both the young and old to continue to believe in their dreams of building start-up businesses, and apply this handy knowledge to raise capital.

    The seven chapters book is built around the word CAPITAL for readers to easily recall the contents and apply them in the process of raising capital for start-ups.

  • Banking Management and Operations

    Banking books commonly focus on the management of the bank and its financial statement. Such books are specialized reading for students of bank management or administration.

    This book, ‘Banking Management and Operations ‘, do not ‘teach’ banking; it rather elicits some of the weaknesses and challenges in banking management and practices that relate to their day-to-day transformation. It, therefore, suggests sacred considerations for added efficiency by tightening the loose screws in operations and management practices. It looks at the need for customer protection, satisfaction, and customer confidence which have become more crucial. This is critical in 21st-century business practices which sometimes assume that high fliers, profit rankers, spectacular achievers; or words, attitudes, and actions of Management and Personnel are conducted with honesty and goodness.

    Let us remember that for every credibility gap, there is a gullibility filled with miscreants hovering around them.

     The book provides simple professional tools to integrate specific functional thoughts in banking operations and management in one shell. It also forewarns practitioners, students, and consumers that banking business threats are like growing viruses in all forms, in the face of rising financial crime waves, cybercrime, money laundering and terrorist activities.

    The two critical functions, management and banking operations have been selected to run through the book. They clearly identify with each chapter and show how their interplay can make things happen in order to meet strategic objectives or reasonably protect stakeholders.

    The chapters cover a collection of banking concepts, relevant strategic management information requirements and related job functions that fit into bank specific enterprise risk management.

    Clearly, identified and appropriate ICT application platforms products and services within banking legal framework and conventions are offered. The value propositions answer the question:

    ‘How do we protect customers’ monies and provide satisfying services to them.’

  • Swimming Upstream: The Story of Southern Cross

    Kwame Donkoh Fordwor’s dream was realized due to the precision planning which was utilized to develop Southern Cross Mining Limited (SCML), as the company established itself as the first active gold mining operation to be brought to Ghana Since 1937. This came to pass by way of chance associations and the joint efforts of collaborators who possessed different backgrounds and motivations.
    Even with the assistance of numerous people along the way, the inception of Southern Cross was not easy. It required aggressive action and time to fend or larger corporations and fight government officials for the rights and freedoms they felt they deserved.
    Fordwor titles this book Swimming Upstream: The Story of Southern Cross because of the comparisons he draws between himself and the struggles of salmon attempting to reach their spawning grounds. Much like a salmon battling currents, fishermen, and other predators to reach its final destination, Fordwor had to struggle to make his own path and place in history, using keen instincts and good fortune to maintain the competitiveness and success of SCML.
    Swimming Upstream vividly details the rich history of Southern Cross and other gold mining venturers who strived to achieve historical recognition. It is an illuminating work-powerfully written and inspirational to all who are still seeking to make a lifetime dream come true.

  • Mine for the Value – Introduction to Product Management for Retail/Consumer Banking

    The ultimate aim of the book is to reinforce the business management orientation required in product management and also strongly underscore the fact that business is won at the frontlines. The win is convincing when every player in the front-line team has a deepened understanding of the products and services that represent the main arsenal of the business.

    As demonstrated in the book, it is only when team approach is adopted for most key product and service initiatives that impactful results get achieved.

    This book is highly recommended for customer service officers, branch managers, product managers, branch operation managers, call center staff, the analytics team, operational risk team members and IT support crew.

  • Knowledge Management and Network for Capacity Development: A Focus on Institute of Directors Ghana (Hardcover)

    The book examines how directors in Ghana share tacit knowledge and experiences on the board. The rationale is that there is the tendency for boards In Ghana to lose tacit knowledge, experiences, skills and particularly up to date knowledge required to inform their decision making due to lack of practical knowledge management system for directors’ capacity development. The focus is to examine how the Institute of Directors Ghana (IODG) can manage knowledge with the view to tackling challenges leading to losing tacit knowledge, experiences, and skills of boards in Ghana.

    The objective is to influence boards of organizations in Ghana to recognize and initiate knowledge management practices, as well as adopt policies that support the application of practical knowledge management systems and interpersonal networks for directors’ capacity development in Ghana.

    The results revealed the existence of records of minutes of meetings indicating a latent existence of knowledge management system within organizations but not formalized as a knowledge management system. Also, significantly missing was technology for knowledge transformation.

    The book recommends knowledge management systems backed by technology for acquiring and sharing directors’ knowledge for successful knowledge transformation.

  • Principles & Practice of Taxation

    This book covers all the principles and practice of taxation in Ghana. The book is current and straight to the point, devoid of any technical tax jargons. The cases and exercises at the end of each chapter capture the applications of the principles. Some of the cases are quite lengthy; particularly the style of examiners, the objective is to expose users to both principles and dynamics of the practice of taxation as well as examination.

  • The Economist Style Guide: A Concise Guide for All Your Business Communications

    An authoritative reference on clear, concise writing

    Witty, concise, and enlightening, The Economist Style Guide is an authoritative resource for all your written communications. Based on the style guide used by the writers for the renowned international business journal acclaimed for its crisp, clear writing, this practical guide offers unerring guidance on grammar, usage, and style in business communications.

    Providing sage advice on writing in general (“Use the language of everyday speech”; “Long paragraphs, like long sentences, confuse the reader”; “Don’t overdo the use of don’t, isn’t, can’t, won’t, etc.”), the Guide clarifies such perpetual questions as: compare with (emphasizes differences) and compare to (similarities) different — used with from, not to or than affect (to have an influence on) and effect (to accomplish).

    There’s also invaluable information on international business terms and abbreviations, political and geographical facts, units of measurement, currencies, trade classifications, differences between American and British English, and much more.

    In today’s high-speed business environment, the ability to communicate clearly, accurately, and concisely is essential to professional success. The Economist Style Guide has become the reference of choice for business people everywhere who need practical, authoritative advice on how to improve their written communications.

    Developed from the style guide used by those who work for The Economist—the international business journal renowned for its writing excellence—this handy resource provides easily accessible answers to the numerous questions of usage, grammar, and style that frequently arise in the course of a business day.

    Offering invaluable guidance on the principles of good writing, The Economist Style Guide defines commonly misused words and expressions, and explains the correct use of punctuation, abbreviations, capital letters, and more —all illustrated with an abundance of amusing examples.

    As an aid to those engaged in international business, the Guide supplies a wealth of handy reference material on such areas as units of measurement, political and geographical terms, currencies, trade classifications, differences between American and British English, and much more.

    Whether you are dashing off a quick e-mail message or preparing a formal report, The Economist Style Guide will help you hone your language skills and sharpen all your business communications. It is an indispensable aid to clarity and precision that will prove its value again and again as the reference book you’ll keep within reach whenever you write.

  • Diamonds, Gold and War: The Making of South Africa

    Southern Africa was once regarded as a worthless jumble of British colonies, Boer republics, and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. But then prospectors chanced upon the world’s richest deposits of diamonds and gold, setting off a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land. The result was the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and the devastation of the Boer republics.

    The New Yorker calls this magisterial account of those years “[an] astute history…Meredith expertly shows how the exigencies of the diamond (and then gold) rush laid the foundation for apartheid.”

  • Sand, Sun & Surprises: A Nigerian Expatriate in the Middle East – A Memoir

    Sand, Sun & Surprises is a personal story told by a Nigerian Professor about his experiences and observations working in, and visiting countries in the Middle East over 23 years. 

    The 316-page memoir includes descriptions of the social life, leisure and religious practices in the region. It captures a snapshot of the socio-economic landscape of Nigeria reeling from the economic depression of the late 1980s and the surprising contrasts with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, societies adjusting to dramatically improved standards of living as a result of their massive oil wealth.

    This book is a compelling read for those who intend to visit or work in the Middle East, or indeed pursue careers outside their countries.

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