For lack of knowledge, businesses perish – I-ZAR GCE Rashida Saani Nasamu

Astute business mogul and Group Chief Executive (GCE) of I-ZAR Group, Rashida Saani Nasamu, has emphasised the critical role financial literacy plays in achieving success and business stability.

With several successful multi-industry businesses under her belt in sectors such as strategic communication, real estate, IT, retail, media investments and the food industry, the I-ZAR GCE poured out essential financial literacy tools to help Small and Medium-Sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana.

The serial entrepreneur explained that business owners must track the value of what is invested in correspondence with what is achieved to be successful.

“They say, ‘for lack of knowledge, my people perish’. In this case, for lack of knowledge, businesses perish,” she lamented. “If you do not understand money matters in your business, it is clearly tantamount to pouring water into a basket”.

With her understanding of close to 90% of businesses in Ghana being SMEs, Madam Rashida Saani Nasamu related her speech to ‘Alhaji’s Wife Waakye’, a flourishing restaurant she established in 2019, located at Spintex.

The I-ZAR GCE observed that understanding financial matters gives business owners “the capacity to budget and understand profits”.

For her, the absence of sound financial literacy will lead to SMEs “operating in darkness”.

Consequently, within a short period, such business will fade into oblivion.

“There won’t be growth; there won’t be internationalisation,” she emphasised.

The I-ZAR GCE was speaking at a banking webinar organised by the Universal Merchant Bank (UMB) on Tuesday, June 27, on the theme: Financial Literacy and Capacity Building, a Tool for Wealth Creation for Women-Owned SMEs.

Madam Rashida Saani Nasamu, honoured with the 40 Under 40 Alumni Achievement Award and most recently, crowned the 2023 Most Outstanding Entrepreneur at the Northern Excellence Awards, cited how her lack of financial literacy at the early stages of her business journey caused her to lose huge cash.

“When I made my first one million in business, I went to the bank and withdrew everything home. I kept the money for over five months. I would want to believe financial technocrats are beginning to do the math already on how much I lost on a million for the period of five months as a result of financial illiteracy.

“If I had understood this better, I would have known that the returns I would have had on each 90-day period would have been enough to pay some of my staff I had,” she recounted.

The business magnate and philanthropist added a call to policymakers that would ensure the long-term sustainability of Ghanaian businesses.

“At the national level, I will like to see a tweak in policy. There are many interventions to support business owners, but one thing is missing,” she bemoaned.

“There is no financial literacy to maintain or ensure that it is sustained.

“By the power of empowerment of giving ourselves the capacity to understand money matters in our business, we can go beyond the fourth year of our business and beat the forecast that has always been there,” she concluded.