By Betsy Ramser Jaime
Ezekiel Amisoh is a 23-year-old student and entrepreneur living in Nyinahin in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. As a child, Ezekiel was able to grow up watching his parents in their entrepreneurial ventures as his father is a farmer and his mother is a petty trader. Today, he is a student at the University of Education, Kumasi campus, earning a degree in Accounting Education.
In addition to his studies, he also runs a business of his own as he explains, ‘I run a mobile money merchant business and have been in business for the past three years and my business keeps on growing daily.’
As a business owner, Ezekiel is passionate about using his business to help and empower the less fortunate members of his community. He shares, ‘My main motive behind my business is to help the poor and needy, I have been through it before where we could barely feed and I know how it feels. For the past years with the little I get I always try to use part of my profit after tax to help the needy. I know I don’t have the strength to do this alone but with the help of the good people of Zidisha I know we can do this together.’
While many business owners around the world have struggled tremendously because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ezekiel has been fortunate as his business has continued to grow during this time. Surprisingly, he’s even had days where he has been forced to close up shop in the afternoon because of a lack of funds to serve his customers.
As a member of the Zidisha community, Ezekiel is optimistic about what he can do with the help of his lenders as he says, ‘I believe with expansion of my business I can meet the demand of my customers and also help me fulfill my dream by helping the poor and the needy. I believe with the help of lenders on this platform we can all help alleviate poverty with the little I get from my business through the help of noble lenders here.’
In describing his business, Ezekiel shares, ‘I have a mobile money shop that I employ members to work for me. I believe with enough capital invested in my business I will earn an average profit of 3500 cedis per week. Even with my small capital I manage to make an average profit of 1800 cedis every week. With my capital not enough to meet the demand of all my customers so I have to always direct people to a different mobile money merchant when someone comes with a huge amount to transact.’
In total, Ezekiel has been able to successfully raise 8 loans on the Zidisha platform. As he sought his first Zidisha funded loan in May 2020, he shared with lenders, ‘I have a mobile money business that I need huge capital to expand it, and getting this amount will help me to start my expansion gradually and thus I will invest it into my mobile money business to facilitate smooth transaction and to meet my customers demand. This coronavirus will not affect my business in the sense that, I run a mobile money business which is electronic money and many people especially the traders now fear to travel to buy goods and pay with physical money and they all now resort to the electronic means of payment. In doing this they need a mobile money merchant to help them facilitate their transaction and that will call for me to come and transact with them. So I can confidently say my weekly earnings keeps on increasing more than 100% each week. With much confidence this period is the best for me and I can pay any amount of loan granted in due time.’
With each consecutive loan from Zidisha lenders, Ezekiel has been able to grow his business and meet the demands of his customers.
Would you like to help an entrepreneur like Ezekiel take his business to new heights? Make sure to head on over to our Browse Projects page to read about Zidisha entrepreneurs around the world.
