June, 2019 | Kajsa HA

This week, I paid a visit to the exciting new innovation, incubation and coworking space in Tema, InnoSpace Tema. It is located side-by-side to Ecobank in Tema’s business district Community 1 and InnoSpace Tema offers meeting and working space in a good location.

Proximity to Ecobank Community 1
One stair case up
You find InnoSpace Tema
MD was in! Coffee too!

I chatted with the team behind InnoSpace: Naomi Anita Addae is the Managing Director, Daniel Addae is a Director and the Chief Technology Officer and Michael Osei Nkrumah is a Director and a Training Consultant, (entrepreneurship and international development).

Daniel, Naomi Anita and Michael of InnoSpace Tema

1. Why does Tema need an innovation hub?
InnoSpace is a creative space for creative thinkers. Tema is a Metropolitan populated with very vibrant, talented and innovative youth who are looking to make a positive impact and be rewarded in return. Talk of music and arts, tech, entrepreneurship and more, they’re there. Most people travel all the way to ImpactHub, Ghana Innovation Hub and the likes in Accra to hone their creativity and innovation. InnoSpace is established right here in Tema to fill that gap and to spearhead entrepreneurship – tech, agribusiness, and water & sanitation through coworking, private spaces and enterprise development incubation programs.
2. What is your plan for the next 6 months?
We just had our first enterprise development stakeholders forum which was oversubscribed; in the coming 6 months, we will be organizing the first ever hackathon in Tema where we bring tech-savvy youth to leverage on technology to solve social and business problems
3. What is InnoSpace Tema especially passionate about?
We are passionate about innovation, entrepreneurship, tech and the SDGs.

Personally, I am excited to see Tema, the center of the world geographically, connect with the world of hubs and offer this service to small and new businesses. And a passionate hub at that.

Learn more about InnoSpace and its offerings on Coworker.com or on Facebook. Other hubs in Ghana you can find on the Ghana Tech and Bz Hubs Network website!

Welcome InnoSpace!

A Stolen Childhood and a Reclaimed Story: Brigitte Sossou Perenyi

Recently, I was introduced to an elegant looking woman in a coffee shop in Accra. She was well-spoken, chic, and had a good sense of humor, and a hello turned into a 30-minute conversation. Towards the middle of the convo, she told me about having had the opportunity to make a BBC documentary about her life. I was quite impressed talking to a twenty-something with her own documentary and told her I would check it out.

The woman was Brigitte Sossou Perenyi and her story was “My stolen childhood: understanding the trokosi system”. This fantastic documentary chronicles Brigitte’s and thousands of other West African girls’ unfair fate of being human sacrifices. In some cultures in Ghana, Togo, and Benin, a committed sin is believed to cause sickness and death in the family which can only be stopped if a girl is “sacrificed” and made a slave of a shrine.

This documentary is fantastic as it shows how striving for understanding of wrongs made against you can free you, how returning to the scene of the crime and remembering together can let your courage spread to others. Our heroine travels the region and speaks to everyone from an Uber-driver, a group of elders, academics studying the practice at the University of Ghana, her trokosi friend who also managed to get free, her family, and to all of us who want to listen to her story. I spent another half-an-hour with Brigitte and cherished every moment of it.

Thank you Brigitte for reclaiming and sharing your story with so much courage and truth-telling!

Trokosi, or ritual servitude, was made a crime in 1998, but no one has been prosecuted for a practice that is still ongoing and affecting many lives.

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