Kwame Despite should not be commended – Sherif Ghali

The CEO of Despite Group of Companies, Dr Osei Kwame Despite donated a children’s block as a birthday present to the 37 Military Hospital.

The completed ultramodern facility which was commissioned on 2nd February 2018 was named after him on his birthday.

He is widely known for his philanthropic works and the construction of the children’s ward comes at a time when there is global call to curb child mortality.

Some Ghanaians took to social media to shower praises on the philanthropic work of Dr Osei Kwame but others think different.

The most intriguing part is that a known youth business leader, Sherif Ghali thinks Ghanaians are overpraising him. He opines that, what Despite did on his birthday isn’t a new thing and that it has been done before.

“We’ve seen entrepreneurs build hospitals and school blocks over the past years whiles deliberately or un-deliberately ignoring other equally important things. We all know that building a hospital is one core onus of the government to do with the taxes from Ghanaians.”

One may argue that the facility would offer medical treatment to the sick and create jobs opportunity for health and non-health officers.

Nonetheless, Sherif Ghali holds the view that, in Ghana, there are so many pressing matters that successful entrepreneurs like Despite could help address easily.

He lamented that “every year we are told an average population of about 75,000 graduates hit the market and only 10% get employed. This is no joke. Do we know what could happen in the next two to three years? What I expected people like Despite to do is to create some sort of funds as Corporate Social Responsibility ( CSR) for young people with scalable business ideas to tap on and make a living out of it”.

“Well, everyone and their taste of given back to the society but honestly if the successful entrepreneurs want to truly help Ghana, they should extend their generosity and CSR to grooming up more young businesses,” he echoed.

He further mentioned that some Ghanaian successful entrepreneurs are very greedy.

“Their greediness is so bad that they will even steal a business idea from a poor young person and make it their own. I know successful entrepreneurs who have stolen ideas from many young entrepreneurs.”

He added that many young people find it difficult to discuss their business ideas for help or investment for fear of their ideas being stolen.

He advised that successful entrepreneurs should start channelling their support to young entrepreneurs.

To him, this would help build a better mother Ghana. If we have 10 million successful entrepreneurs, we can come together and build millions of schools and hospitals.

Isaac Minta Buabeng