The trend of dressing corporately to do menial jobs in Nigeria and Africa seems to be on the increase as sole proprietors have been branding and packaging their businesses to maximize profits.
Mr. Sosu Patrick
This is a street vendor named Mr. Sosu Patrick, who sells roasted food materials on the streets of Accra, Ghana with strong patronage from people.
The pictures of Sosu Patrick which have gone viral on social media were captured by a Ghanaian photographer and health enthusiast, Kobby Blay.
Sosu Patrick, popularly known as SP is a 40-year-old vendor of a highly favoured Ghanaian street “chops,” roasted plantain and coconut.
Intriguingly enough, this particular type of vending seems reserved for women. But even as it is astonishing to most people in the patriarchal Ghanaian system that SP would dabble in this trade, what draw more people to him would certainly have to be his “unusually” sharp dressing and heightened sense of hygiene, style, and branding.
In the pictures, which have since gone viral, Mr. Sosu is seen donning a suit, white shirt, a beaded tie of the Ghana flag colors topped with a wide-brimmed leather hat.
According to the Kobby Blay, who took the photos, Sosu narrated to him how his business had started some five years ago after he had “a dream that this was going to be his breakthrough”.
“I have some other children too, and they are in school where I hail from,” Sosu told Kobby Blay. “I have a quite a large farm and will soon complete my house.”
On health, the stylish corn seller believes he is probably Accra’s “best seller of good healthy roasted corn” as he doesn’t allow his customers to touch the corn until after they have purchased it from him. He enthused to Blay, “I don’t want my customers to blame me for cholera”