AMSCO pledges to support African enterprises

The African Management Services Company (AMSCO) has pledged to support African enterprises in enhancing employee and management skills to improve efficiencies, increase productivity, impact leadership and good governance.

AMSCO also has sectorial training interventions focused on the sector in order to achieve greater skills development impact.  African governments and their economies are able to benefit from the multiplicity of social and economic benefits derived.

 “Capacity is delivered through a range of training progammes -- designed for individuals and for companies aimed at accelerating enterprise growth and profitability,” said AMSCO’s Regional Manager, West & Central Africa, Mohamed Ky, at a maiden breakfast meeting held in Accra in collaboration with the World Trade Centre-Accra.

The objective of the meeting was to collaborate in providing world standard services through the training of small and medium enterprises, management and local entrepreneurs by offering management placements, recruitment and capacity development to enhance productivity.

The meeting introduced AMSCO and the African Training and Management Services Project (ATMS), a regional project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to share experiences in using expert human resources in spurring the future growth of companies.

AMSCO, which administers the African Training and Management Services (ATMS) project, is a pioneer of capacity and skills development within the African SME sector.

Participants included major stakeholders of AMSCO – namely the World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Africa Development Bank (AfDB).

Mr. Ky explained that AMSCO will continue to play a pivotal role in human capital development to achieve sustainable business development in Africa. 

“We play the game of capital development. We play a key role in facilitating our partners to have access to finance and skills.

“The private sector is going to be an engine of development in Africa.  We are active in many sectors including health, utilities and in all sectors of the economy. Africa is the new frontier in investment. The outcome we expect is that we want economic improvement.”

AMSCO’s strategy for the period 2011 to 2017 outlined a shift in focus toward the new business lines to achieve commercial sustainability for AMSCO in 2017, he said.

On capacity development, he said the their training implementation reaches 6,398 individuals from 391 companies through a wide range of client-specific and open programmes representing non-exclusive to AMSCO clients.

“While AMSCO’s traditional business activity of ‘management placements’ and capacity building of African business increased further over 2012 and ended with 466 managers in 283 businesses in 24 countries, its new business lines which included recruitment services as well as broader sector-based capacity development and technical assistance has begun to take shape -- both in form and substance -- under the Strategic Business Unit management.”

Ky stressed the need for increased collaboration and engagement to ensure that AMSCO can play the role of interface between global actors and local communities within the rapidly changing African dynamics.

“AMSCO’s mandate is to help African enterprises become globally competitive, profitable and sustainable by providing human capital and skill development services to African businesses, particularly SMEs,” he added.

He said the ATMS project has helped to reduce poverty, improve accountability and capacity development in Africa as well as helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Mr. Ky indicated that companies that want to partner with AMSCO must be able to fulfil a number of criteria which are available upon a request.

Mr. Emmanuel Doni-Kwame, Managing Director, World Trade Centre-Accra, expressed his outfit’s readiness to collaborate with AMSCO to help SMEs in the country thrive.