Urgent thought-leading and value-adding supervisory interventions are required to help protect shareholder assets and make organisations more socially and economically responsible and accountable to support Ghana and the rest of Africa’s long-term developmental agenda.

This is according to Prof. Douglas Boateng, MIIF’s non-executive chair and founder of the African Council of Chairpersons (AfCOCH), a regional-wide organisation that aims to provide African chairpersons with a platform to collaborate on supervisory issues of organizational, sectorial, national and regional importance.

“The vision of AfCOCH is to institute, monitor, and maintain performance-driven leadership standards plus help promote chairpersonships as a profession guided by a code of conduct.” Currently, the entire region’s chairpersons are relatively working as individuals with no collective voice, no real supervisory leadership power, or collaborative coordination.

"This means that accomplished professionals and elderly state persons cannot comment and effectively provide guidance on governance matters or broader business and development-related issues,” he said.

Commenting on the initiative after officially receiving copies of the Executive Compendium on Supply Chain Management terms for distribution to all Council of State members, the chairperson of the group of accomplished elder state persons, Nana Otuo Serebour II, said: “The AfCOCH initiative shall undoubtedly help to strengthen and monitor regional wide fiduciary responsibilities of chairpersons. For us at the Council of State, the time has come for overseers of organizations to help push supply chain governance to support national developmental objectives and the UNSDGs”.

Summarily articulating how AfCOCH activities shall support the Council of State and other institutions, Stephen Blay, Director of Finance and Administration at the Council of State, said, “AfCOCH will play an important role in assisting the Executive, legislature, SIGA, and private sector organizations to protect and grow shareholder assets.”

Director General of SIGA, Ambassador Edward Boateng, affirmed the urgent need for chairpersons to provide directional leadership, act as mentors, counselors, and coaches to executive and non-executive leadership teams within organizations, and be socially responsible.

“The purpose of the AfCOCH is to ensure that public and private sector organizations have the authority, up-to-date skills, tools, facilities, and ‘real’ support to help address matters of strategic and material importance to regional, national, sectorial, and organizational development.

"It will achieve this by providing a best-in-class platform (s) for chairpersons to engage and coordinate developmental imperatives”, he concluded.

Prof. Boateng described AfCOCH as independent, industry-driven, and not government driven. Nor is it partisan and for profit.

“The focus of AfCOCH is for the greater good of the nation, the continent, and African chairpersons. It will provide unrivalled regional-wide facilities and administrative support for chairpersons to execute their supervisory duties,” he emphasized.

Further engagements on the role of AfCOCH, according to Prof. Boateng, are scheduled to take place in the months to come.

“The supporting partner organisations and I are very pleased with (a) the positive responses and encouragement from fellow chairpersons and regional bodies; (b) in-principle acceptance of Ghana as the ‘preferred’ regional headquarters for the project, and (c) progress with the initial establishment of the AfCOCH office in Accra. We look forward to possibly officially launching AfCOCH later in the year in Ghana and announcing affiliate satellite offices in other African countries,” he said.