In 2007-08 I spent a year in Benin, West Africa, as a volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps. Although Africa is easy to write off as a hopeless mess, there’s an important culture and movement toward economic change fueled by locals and West African nationals living abroad that is not visible in the calamity-focused news.
Michael Frank, the COO and founder of HUFRA, a precision machining company in Accra, Ghana, in West Africa, is one of those people. He has made it his mission to bring precision machining technology to his homeland by establishing one of the first CNC job shops in West Africa. Frank finished his Masters degree in manufacturing engineering in Russia and worked for 10 years in Britain. He now splits his time between his family in the UK and his homeland of Ghana, trying to get his fledgling business up and running.
Frank is attempting to do what thousands of immigrants worldwide are doing without notice from the international press—bring technology, opportunity and education back to their homelands. For instance, thousands of Turks who labored as machinists in Germany have returned to Turkey and started job shops. Today Turkey has a well-developed manufacturing core with many shops sending product back to Germany.
But does Frank have a fighting chance at being successful in Africa? At this stage of development in West Africa, with its ever-present economic, political and religious tension, is it possible to make a precision machining business not just function but thrive?
The Hufra Precision Machining Company located in Accra, Ghana, West Africa. Photos courtesy Michael Frank
It is worth signalling that South Africa, which is a country like South Korea and not just the Southern part of the Continent of Africa, has a first world economy with electricity generation of 50 000 Megawatts and machine shops which include literally thousands of CNC lathes and machining centres not to mention thousands of Cam Automatics,
Peter Frow
FAS Machine Tools