Medical Sector in Ghana: Africano Health Sources, Medical Furniture and Equipments

Interview with Mohamed Elkaliouby, Africa Representative at Africano Health Sources and Furniture

What is your assessment of the sector in Ghana? Is the market competitive?

In the last three or four years, the medical sector in Ghana has had to evaluate what we have in terms of hospitals and clinics because this sector has a very big shortage of hospital services. There were a lot of projects for new hospitals to increase the number of beds for the government or private clinics. The biggest hospital in Ghana now, which is in West Legon, has 600 beds. The challenge here is who will serve these hospitals. If you look at how many doctors can serve these hospitals per year, they have only 40%, maybe less, of the doctors they need. All the big hospitals now work at approximately 30% of the capacity of the hospital because they wait to solve this problem. You can find one doctor working in four or five different hospitals because they just do not have the staff. This is one of the challenges Ghana must address in the next two to three years because almost 3,500 beds will be ready by 2020. Who will come to serve the people in this sector, as doctors, nurses, all the staff that we need? On the competitive aspect, there are ten or twelve big companies in Ghana who have some agency from the big names in the industry and outside the country. The scale of their suppliers is quite small, only 20 or 25 companies. In the past two or three years, we had only five or six big governmental hospitals who could offer the necessary equipment or staff. But, in the next two or three years, the medical sector in Ghana will be totally different. It will be very big and all the big brands outside the country will come to open offices here under agency to supply to the hospitals.

There are many new clinics and hospitals coming up, such as Nyaho Clinic and Euracare. What is your assessment of this trend?

Euroget is a project for nine hospitals, eight of which are for the Ministry of Health and one of which is for the Ministry of Defense. There will be a total of 1,800 beds.

In the private sector, there are a lot of investors coming to Ghana this year to investigate private clinics or private hospitals. In the region, many people come from Nigeria, Togo or Côte d’Ivoire to Ghana specifically for medical care. In two or three years’ time, the private sector hospital segment will be very big here. Investors know how much profit they can make in a country like Ghana if they enter that area. In Ghana, if you have a medical issue, you must travel to London, Lebanon, or the US, but now, people will try to be treated here.

What are your key competitive advantages? What can you offer?

We offer all kinds of medical office furniture. We also have agency for a radiology company from Japan (previously Toshiba, but now it has changed to Canon). We offer them all kinds of furniture and all kinds of radiology machines. We are also the agency for a company from Turkey for very special and specific doors for the radiology sector.

How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?

We have a very good mix between price and quality. Our product is made in Turkey, but most of the raw materials are German. There was an economic crisis in the last year that affected our price. Our prices are very competitive with European prices and the quality is the same.

Euroget is a very interesting project for you. Can you describe it in more detail? Things are on verge of happening now with this project.

Euroget is a project for nine hospitals, eight of which are for the Ministry of Health and one of which is for the Ministry of Defense. There will be a total of 1,800 beds. We are supposed to deliver this project by May 2019 at the latest. But, in the next two months, we will have two hospitals ready for opening, one in Wa and one in Madina. For this project we have two or three locations for the hospital sites. The nearest hospital for this area now is almost 300 km away. At this new hospital we will have very high-tech radiology equipment.

What is the next step for the company now that you will deliver this project?

We have already negotiated with the government for another project and phase two will be for ten hospitals. We expect to finalize the deal in March of next year and start immediately from there. It will be 1,000 beds in total. Most of them will be in small villages, and it will be similar to a district hospital for these areas.

Do you need to lobby the government or just prove that you have done a good job? What will grant you another phase?

When we started this project, it was to serve the people who do not have this service in their villages. When you go to some of these places, there is nothing, there is not any kind of life in these areas. They do not have electricity, they do not have water. In that situation, we can have everything inside our facility and we can serve the people and save the lives of many people. We are interested in doing another project with the same idea and the same style. When we negotiated with the government, we agreed that after we deliver 50% of our current project, we will start the second phase. When investing in Africa now, it is not easy to find a country that has security and a stable economy, but this is what we have found in Ghana.

Can you give us more details on the Gold Coast Refinery?

Gold Coast Refinery is the number seven refinery in the world. Our capacity is 180 tons per year and we have two kinds of refining, one is chemical and one uses a special kind of electrostatic refining, achieving almost .59s of the purity of the gold. We also have a new kind of machine that polishes the bars. The next step that we have is to build a new jewelry factory which will be attached to the refinery. After you finish refining you will get your gold as a bar and go to the factory to make jewelry. We hope to have help from the government to find rules or policies for trading gold in Ghana. The black market for gold in Ghana is huge and Ghana as a country loses a lot of money because of this.

Is the building complete and running now?

The machine is working. We work at about 10% capacity, so a slow pace. We are located at the airport, so it is very accessible.

The agriculture sector is very important for you as well. Can you give more details?

It is very important, but for some reason, people do not focus on this sector in Ghana. For example, you can produce rice twice per year, and maybe within five years, 100% of your rice will be locally grown. There are big companies dealing with cocoa and bananas. But, rice is one of the major problems in Ghana because we import almost 87% of our rice. How many millions of dollars go out to buy it? You can produce it here. When we started two years ago, we did a test for production and we got a very good result. This year, we plan to increase the area to 1,000 acres for rice. Also, with castor we started directly with 1,000 acres and we have now gotten some orders from Europe to produce castor oil and export it. We also now have started with 500 acres for Paulownia trees. This is one of the best trees to produce wood in the world now. In China, they have 20 million of these trees. It grows in five to six years and after that, you can harvest the wood. We have started with 6,000 trees. We hope that this will take only four years here in Ghana. It is different from China because of the weather and soil. The revenue will come soon.

Ghana is a land of growth and is quite amazing agriculturally.

The government in Ghana helps us in the agriculture sector because they need to know why all of this investment has come to Ghana, but not for agriculture. We have land, water, weather, everything. They offer land for very cheap and you can use the water and the rains, etc.

China and other countries are looking for lands all over the world to produce. What countries have come to Ghana?

The only major players that have come to Ghana are India and Turkey. There are two or three very big companies in the agricultural sector in Ghana from India and Turkey that are involved with rice, cassava, and many other products, and one company from Kuwait that does only bananas.

What is your strategy for the group?

We have a financial team and a marketing team. We have everything as the private sector, but after that it all comes to the group.

How do you see the development of the company in the medium term, two to three years’ time? What is your vision of the four sectors you are in? Will you concentrate on one specifically?

The agricultural sector is already running by itself. Agriculture is not the same as other sectors where you need to find investors or put in money to build, it is different. We will concentrate on the medical sector in Ghana first, especially for the newly constructed hospitals and our equipment and furniture that we can provide to those projects.

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