My father brings your wildest fantasies into reality – Kwadwo Safo Jnr on Kantanka inventions

The CEO of Kantanka Group, Kwadwo Safo Jnr, says many of the company’s inventions are borne out of his father’s and other people’s imagination.

In an interview on JoyNews Desk, he explained that his father aimed to challenge the prevailing notion that Africans are not as creatively capable as foreign companies dominating the market.

Kwadwo Safo Jnr emphasised that Kantanka’s unique products, such as TVs and other equipment activated by claps, voice-operated gadgets, and other distinctive inventions, were all conceived as a result of various fantasies.

I think my father, growing up, had a lot of sci-fi fantasies and he’s brought all thoughts into reality. I mean we have TVs that come on with just blowing air onto it and we have ones that you clap to turn on.”

“We don’t have the clappers with the cars yet. But we have weirder cars. My father once made a car and the concept is when Moses went to the Red Sea, and he pointed the rod to make way, if you point the rod on the car, the car starts and it even moves to you, it’s self-driving,” Kwadwo Safo added.

He acknowledged that people often make jokes about these inventions on social media, adding that he also enjoys watching them.

However, Kwadwo Safo Jnr clarified that many of these features are incorporated into their gadgets upon customer requests, contrary to popular belief.

Meanwhile, the Kantanka CEO indicated that many of his father’s earlier inventions he witnessed while in school are now being popularised by foreign companies.

“I see so many things that these foreign companies do and I think to myself we should have registered it and patented it…all these self-parking cars that are out there was done by my father years ago when I was still in school,” he noted.

Despite this, he stated that they are not fazed in their path adding that they are training many Ghanaians who have gone to start their own businesses and creating more gadgets including cars, which he said has had a growing consumer base.

“The whole intention and motive is to get a lot of people to believe that we Africans can do it. I mean that is where things started from, awareness – to let people know that we are capable of doing it, you are not just a black man. My father has this thing he says, ‘you might have a black skin but that doesn’t mean your brains are all black’.”