Five African countries namely Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Rwanda are competing for the right to host the African head office of e-commerce giant, Amazon.
The on-going competition between the five African countries was disclosed by Yofi Grant, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana’s foremost investment agency, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC).
Making the disclosure during a press briefing on Sunday, June 20, 2021, Mr Grant posited that despite Ghana being a naturally attractive investment market, the country still has to offer “something attractive enough” to woo Amazon to establish its African head office in the country.
“We are still talking with Amazon and bear in mind that we are competing with Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Rwanda. So we have to offer them something attractive enough apart from the fact that Ghana’s market is naturally attractive and also that we are in the middle of the world and so logistics wise we are ideally situated.”
“And we also have an economy that is among the fastest as well as conditons which are attractive to investors but we are still talking with them and hopefully they can come and already I am getting some positive news,” he stated.
After being selected as the country to host the head office of social media giant, Twitter, for its operations on the African Continent, Ghana has also been looking to woo leadership of the world’s largest e-commerce platform Amazon, into also making Ghana its headquarters on the continent.
Moves by government to attract the e-commerce company owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, was first disclosed by the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta at a press briefing on Sunday, May 9.
“In addition to Google setting up its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory in Accra, Twitter is also setting its headquarters in Accra and GIPC is working assiduously to attract the like of Amazon into the country to deepen the tech entrepreneurial ecosystem for Ghanaian entrepreneurs,” stated Ken Ofori-Atta.
Despite having a regular office in Lagos Nigeria, Google, one of the world’s leading internet companies, chose Ghana as the location for its prestigious and very first Artificial Intelligence research laboratory on the African continent.
Google has only 5 of such labs in the world located in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Google HQ and now in Accra, Ghana.
Twitter, according to its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jack Dorsey, selected Ghana as the headquarters for its African operations given the country’s firm support of free speech, online freedom, and the open internet.
Adding that Ghana’s recent appointment to host the Secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area allowed Twitter to “establish a presence in the region.”
It is unclear the terms on which government through the GIPC is having its discussions with the leadership of Amazon in an attempt to woo them to join Google and Twitter and also situate its headquarters in Ghana.
Although the terms on which ongoing discussions between government and Amazon are unknown, one can be certain that government will offer some incentives or ‘goodies’ to motivate Amazon to set up its head office in the country.
Some of the incentives likely to be offered by government include; tax holidays, concessionary tax rates, capital allowances, protection against expropriation of capital and investments, full repatriation of dividends and net profit attributed to investors, transfer of funds for foreign loans servicing, and release from double taxation for foreigners and employees where applicable.
Should leadership of Amazon find government’s terms on which it has to setup a head office in Ghana favourable and as well as find the incentives offered attractive, the world’s largest e-commerce company is very likely to choose Ghana as its headquarters on the continent.
