Made In China: Can Safo Kantanka's Automobiles Really Be Described As 'Made In Ghana' When They Consist Solely Of Reassembled Car Parts From China?

Safo Kantanka, the man hailed as a revolutionary for spearheading the production of the first ever made in Ghana cars, has had his bona fides challenged in a blistering new article describing his marketing of the Kantanka brand of automobiles as a myth.
In a lengthy piece talking about Kanatanka’s vehicles, a writer on the jalopnik blog, Raphael Orlove, carefully deconstructs the myth around the first ever made in Ghana cars, tracing their origins to a Chinese company that ships car parts to other parts of the world for assembly.
Apostle Kwadwo Safo, popularly called Safo Kantanka, is the Ghanaian entrepreneur and inventor who recently released his Kantanka brand of cars which have been widely praised as being the first ‘made in Ghana’ cars to hit the market, and he has garnered rave reviews from both local and international press for his exploits.
This prompted the writer to look much closer into the operations of Safo Kantanka.
“To the extent that the cars are produced in Ghana, it appears to be matter of final local assembly of components that have been stamped out and largely prebuilt in China.” Orlove writes. “It would seem Kantanka’s unique contributions amount to little more than the badges and trim, a fact that has escaped news coverage to date.”
So what evidence is presented in support of this gargantuan allegation? A commenter on Al-Jazeera gave the first big clue.

The comment indicated that a Chinese company, Chongqing Big Science & Technology, were providing parts to Safo Kantanka for reassembly. And not just parts of the car that might be too difficult to produce in Ghana but parts of the entire car. All Kantanka’s workers have to do is put them back together into the car they were before shipment and give them a different name and market them differently.
Some sleuthing revealed Chongqing admitting working with a Ghanaian company, and photos of their products showed striking similarities between what they were selling and Kantanka’s eventual cars.

“As I started looking further into Chongqing Big Science & Technology’s page on Alibaba—the massive Chinese e-commerce marketplace—I noticed that the site not only offered the same cars as Kantanka, but Chongqing Big Science & Technology explained that they sell the production facilities to assemble these vehicles yourself. And they will send out trained technicians to help you learn how to assemble these made-in-China cars, kind of like the world’s most complicated Ikea sets.
“To prove that they offered these services, Chongqing Big Science & Technology advertised that they had done this work before. In Africa. With pictures of the company’s workers in Ghana, building the factory that Kantanka proudly showed to the press as its own independent work.
“By all appearances, Chongqing Big Science & Technology is the secret behind Kantanka’s rapid transformation from a producer of low-level oddities to what looks like a viable auto manufacturer.” the piece continues. “Certainly it was strange that an Alibaba page, basically China’s version of Amazon where you might buy generic backpacks or electronics in bulk, might be the key to one of the breakout stars in the automotive world.
“But it’s not all that odd for a company in a developing nation to sell cars assembled from parts built in more industrialized countries.”
What is odd though, is that “this Chinese relationship is kept obscured goes against Safo’s message of bringing pride to Africa through home-market design and manufacturing.”
By keeping the relationship and dealings out of the public eye, and by marketing his cars as made in Ghana, Kantanka can dodge expensive import fees if he were bringing the cars in here, and thus sell at a cheaper price. It is a genius bit of business, but just a little to disingenuous for a pastor to be running.
The story has kind of blown up locally, and Kantanka has yet to respond to it. A lot of people have already made this connection to Kantanka’s vehicles in the past, but they are now getting more scrutiny than ever before.
You can read the full piece here..