Ghana Climate Innovation Center Inducts Entrepreneurs Into Incubator

Twelve entrepreneurs, carefully selected from over one hundred applicants across the country, have been inducted into the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre (GCIC), a business incubator.

The inductees, constituting cohort two of the programme, were Mr Desmond Koney, a Mechanical Engineer; Mr Conrad Kaaiwula, Founder of EL Balicon Limited; Mr Isaac Brenyah, Green Entrepreneur; Dr Sachibu Mohammed, a Development Professional, Mr Lincoln Winimi Peedah, Team Executive Officer of Neat Meat Limited.

The others were Mr Sulley Amin Abubakar, Founder of Zaacoal; Ms Salma Abdulai, Founder of Unique Quality Product Enterprise; Ms Nicole Poindexter, Founder of Energicity; and Mr Charles Boatin, CEO of Arela Chemicals.

The rest were Mr Kwami Williams, Co-Founder of Moringa Connect Company Limited and Mr Philip Akaboa, a welder.

In a statement at the induction ceremony, Mrs Patricia Appiagyei, a Deputy Minister for the Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, said to lower poverty, there was the need to leverage technology.

Mrs Appiagyei said the youth should be taught the right way of doing business and that business development, like the incubation centre of the GCIC, was a critical need for our youth.

She said it was very critical for entrepreneurs to resist challenges when they come their way and to develop a strong mindset.

The Deputy Minister charged managers of the business incubator to ensure that the second cohort was successful, just like the first cohort, while expressing belief that more people would join in the near future.

She noted that the initiative was very innovative and provided entrepreneurs with the requisite skills and ability to show leadership.

Mrs Appiagyei said government would adopt GCIC's model to develop young entrepreneurs for the year 2018 under the National Entrepreneurship Programme.

She disclosed that government was developing an alternative energy mix for the country as well as legislation that would address the use of technology, science and innovation.

Furthermore, she said, plans were far advanced to commercialize research findings, noting that the era of not putting research works into good use had come to an end, citing President Akufo-Addo's's passionate determination to ensure that one per cent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was actually appropriated for research work," she said.

The Executive Director of GCIC, Rukaya Sanusi, in his remarks, explained that said the business incubator was designed to nurture and raise transformational business leaders whose business has the capability to go the long hall.

"As an institution, we exist to work with businesses to ensure that they are able to sustain and to manage whatever the market place throws at them and that is what GCIC is all about," she said.

The GCIC project, which is being implemented by Ashesi University, Ernst and Young, the Netherlands Development Agency and the United Nations University, aims at supporting Ghanaian entrepreneurs to develop profitable and locally appropriate solutions to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Source: ISD (Abu Mubarik)

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