Agribusiness holds the key to job creation -GIZ
Agribusiness offers a great opportunity for the youth to create their own businesses and the country to create jobs to address the growing unemployment, Head of Programme at GIZ, Dr ElkeStumpf, has said.
Particularly, she said agro processing and value addition were some of the areas the country could create a lot of jobs and businesses.
Dr Stumpf said this in an interview with the Ghanaian Times after the graduation of the fourth cohort and enrolment of its Ignite programme.
The Ignite programme was started in 2016 by Guzakuza, a Non-governmental with the focus on agribusiness to help support women to turn their agribusiness ideas into resilient businesses.
So far about 161 women from all over Africa have benefited from the programme and created about 800 jobs.
As part of the programme 161 women graduated from the 2020 cohort and 80 women selected for the 2021 cohort, were enrolled.
Dr Stumpf observed that most of the Small and Medium-scale Enterprises were in agribusiness.
She said the country needed to venture seriously into processing and add value to the country’s numerous agricultural products.
That, she said would help attract more value for the country’s raw products and reduce importation.
“More than 90 per cent of cocoa is exported raw and this does not portend well for the country,” she said.
She advised the citizens to consume made in Ghana products to encourage local production.
Dr Stumpf pledged GIZ`s continued commitment to support initiatives that empowered women and the youth to create their own businesses and turn their ideas into businesses.
The Team Lead of the Ignite Project, Fortune Kyei, said the Ignite initiative was started in 2016.
She said the objective was to support women to build resilient businesses in agribusiness.
“The Ignite programme supports women to transform their ideas into viable business and those who have existing business to scale-up” she said.
MsKyei said the programme built the capacity of the participants in the agricultural value chain and also went through mentoring and coaching.
Mariam OforiTwum a beneficiary of the Ignite said the programme had helped her a lot and won so many.
Currently, she said had cultivated more than 250 hectares of oil palm and also created tilapia farms and commended Guzakuza for programme.
MrsTwum encouraged women to take advantage of the Ignite programme to turn around their agribusiness businesses.
Esther Adutwumwaa, a member of the 5th cohort on behalf of her colleagues, lauded Guzakuza for the opportunity to learn and transform their agribusiness businesses.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE
