Kofi Ahovi

Nestlé has today announced that the winner of the Creating Shared Value (CSV) Prize 2016 is Agro-Hub from Cameroon. Agro-Hub is an agricultural production and marketing agency based in the south-west of the country that is working to help small-scale farmers gain access to sustainable markets. It has built a small, integrated factory to transform cassava into starch and garri, a type of tapioca, and sells it to its network of consumers through its own fresh food store, Agro-Mart. “Agro-Hub has successfully linked smallholder cassava farmers to markets, providing them with opportunities to generate significant and sustainable income,” said Kais Marzouki, Market Head for Nestlé Central and West Africa. “We are proud that the winner of this year’s prize is from our region and will continue to enhance the livelihoods of Africans in Cameroon and beyond.” Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke presented the CHF 300,000 prize to Agro-Hub at the Creating Shared Value Global Forum 2016 in Abidjan,

Hundreds of thousands of young people in Africa will benefit from training to prepare them for work, while thousands will gain apprenticeships and traineeships at Nestlé, the company’s CEO Paul Bulcke has announced. “Under our Nestlé Global Youth Initiative, we will create more than 3,000 apprenticeships and traineeship opportunities in Africa by the end of 2018. We will provide readiness-for-work training for more than 300,000 young people over the same period,” Mr Bulcke said. The training will include career advice, CV workshops and interview guidance, and will take place at Nestlé sites, career fairs and in schools and colleges across the continent. “Nestlé will also build and strengthen strategic partnerships with organisations supporting youth development,” Mr Bulcke added.

By Kofi Ahovi Members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism have called for political neutrality in the implementation of the Ghana National Single Window (GNSW) project to avoid political clashes in the country. According to them, the novelty project which aims among others things at reducing delays at the ports should be seen as a nation building reform effort that needs all hands on deck. The members of the committee made the call when they paid a working visit on the management and staff of the West Blue Consulting, the technical partners of the project in Accra over the weekend. The purpose of the visit was to abreast themselves with the operations of the company after its successful implementation of the Pre-Arrival Assessment Reporting System (PAARS). The PAARS is a modernized system that has been developed by the Customs Division of Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) as part of the implementation of the GNSW project to enhance revenue mobilizat

By kofi ahovi The Private Enterprise Federation (PEF), a coalition of business associations and chambers has called for comprehensive reforms to improve business registration and application of permits and certificates in the country. According to PEF, if this is done it would reduce the delays and cost of business registrations and also reduce of goods and services in the country. The Chief Executive Officer of PEF, Nana Osei-Bonsu added: “If we are able to reduce the cost of doing business in the SMEs sector and reduce the delays as well we will cut inflation at least by 30% in the country”. He lamented that a study commissioned by PEF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2011 revealed that there were 145 business licenses among the ministries, department and agencies as well as the metropolitan, municipal assembly and district assemblies in Ghana. Out of these, Nana Osei- Bonsu mentioned the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Environmental

By Kofi Ahovi Nestlé Ghana has officially inaugurated a new state- of the art Water Recycling Plant at its Tema Factory to mark World Environment Day. The event was held in Partnership with the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation. The CHF 1.5 million Ultra Filtration-Reverse Osmosis system is built alongside the current waste water treatment plant which was constructed in 2010 as part of the company’s commitments to help treat the water the factory discharges in an environmentally friendly manner. With the addition of the new recycling plant, Nestlé will improve the quality of waste water. The new plant will reuse 30% of waste water for non-core activities, reducing the total factory water consumption by 10%. Mrs. Freda Y. Duplan, Managing Director of Nestlé Ghana, explained that the initiative to invest in a Water Recycling Plant stems from the company’s 39 commitments to society: “As part of its commitments in the area of water, Nestlé commits to treat t