Mayor: Ghana trip brings business opportunities

Government and business officials from Ghana will visit Wichita next spring to see what the city’s aviation, agricultural and construction industries have to offer.

That’s the most tangible result of a week-long economic development recruitment trip city officials took Nov. 14 through 24, a trip Mayor Carl Brewer is confident will yield new business for the city.

“You’ve heard me say many, many times that we have to start searching globally to find business for our community, ways to grow,” Brewer said. “We’re going out and competing for various businesses to improve our economy, not a lot different than other cities and states do with Wichita businesses, to help our quality of life here.”

The trip cost taxpayers about $13,000 for a 10-member delegation. Brewer and Vice Mayor Lavonta Williams paid their own way. The trip included stops in Accra, Elimina and Kumasi, Ghana, where Wichita officials met with local and national dignitaries, and representatives of the nation’s agriculture, alternative energy and transportation industries.

What the local delegation found was a wide range of import and export opportunities, Brewer said, ranging from airplanes and helicopters for government and the private sector to agricultural, energy and infrastructure opportunities for Wichita businesses.

Ghana, located in western Africa, is a growing economy with living conditions “very similar to ours,” Brewer said.

“They have some infrastructure issues they’re concerned about, and we talked with them about that,” he said. “But as for their economy and what they have, they have a booming economy that is a lot agricultural-related and fishery.”

Booming enough that some Wichita-based companies are already doing business in Ghana, Brewer said, including Coleman and Koch Industries.

There also was interest in Ghana in Wichita’s aviation firms, he said.

“When we started visiting with the various kings and chiefs and ministers of those areas, they want to … be able to fly from one community to the next for business,” Brewer said. “They need planes, and they wanted to know if we build helicopters. So we’ll connect them with the planemakers we have here.”

Another issue is infrastructure construction. Government officials in Ghana want to mimic the way sewer and water is handled here, Brewer said. The result could be construction work for some of the city’s private infrastructure contractors, he said.

“A lot of their sewers and stuff like that are above ground,” Brewer said. “When we talked with them about how we handle it below ground, and how we handle preserving water, which is a huge problem for them, they were interested in how we do that.”

City officials are open to similar trips anywhere, given the highly competitive nature of economic development, Brewer and Williams said.

In the meantime, the contacts made in Ghana will be forwarded to the Kansas Department of Commerce for action.

“The leads and relationships were very strong as we left,” Williams said. “When you have relationships of that caliber looking at us now and for the future, it’s a very strong thing.”

This story was originally published November 30, 2011 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Mayor: Ghana trip brings business opportunities."