Ghana Climate Innovation Centre Graduates and Inducts Entrepreneurs

Ghana Climate Innovation Centre (GCIC), a business incubator that supports transformational ventures and entrepreneurs has graduated 12 entrepreneurs as the second cohort.

Also, 22 others have been inducted as the fourth cohort in a joint graduation and induction ceremony held at the Ashesi University.

The Centre also pioneers adaptive and mitigating solutions for climate change issues in Ghana.

Within one year , the climate innovation hub provided the graduates with premium business advisory and mentoring services, technical support in the development, prototyping and testing of their innovation, as well as financial proof of concept grants to these small and medium and enterprises.

The businesses cut across areas of addressing deforestation, creating jobs through agriculture, provision of affordable and reliable energy supplier among others.

GCIC’s cohort 2 graduating class

Speaking on behalf of the graduating class, Lincoln Peedah, founder of local livestock and poultry company, Neat Meat, hailed the benefits that he and his other colleagues have gained from GCIC, noting that the assistance has grounded their business well enough.

“This graduation is not an exit from GCIC, but rather a refreshing journey. The training has helped in the remodeling of our businesses by creating valuable models for revenue generation. We have also made an impact on the environment and sustained our businesses as well.”

Newly inducted cohort

The inductees are expected to by the end of their session, spearhead domestic waste management, climate smart agriculture and energy efficiency in the country.

This will also be done to support climate change by the private sector through skills enhancement, portfolio management, provision of funds and other essential services.

The inductees were provided with plants to symbolize the nurturing of their businesses. These plants will be presented in a year’s time at their graduation ceremony to showcase their success stories.

The newly inducted cohort 4 in a group photograph.

Some business that have inducted include Ripples Interior Décor, Nelplast Ghana Limited, Alliance for seed multiplication, Royal citrus growers , Coliba waste management services, Wen –Neon ventures and others.

Owner of domestic waste management firm, Ripples Interior Decor, Jeffery Yeboah receiving his plant.

Abdul-Nasser Alidu, Entrepreneurship Director at GCIC, also urged the newly inducted group to embrace hard work and add value to the products and services they provide.

“This is a 360 degrees incubator. It is not that you come in and make money and leave. The best entrepreneurs are those who embrace the opportunities they have been given. Push yourself and make the best out of it”, he stressed.

Commercialization of Research

Meanwhile, the center has for the first time given three PhD holders the opportunity to join their business incubator in a bid to commercialize their researches.

The three from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Biotechnology and Nuclear Agriculture Research Institute, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission and CSIR –Savanna Agricultural Research Institute, are expected to among other things enhance various agricultural innovations.

Key among them is a technology to halt the growth of flies which destroy fruits on farms.

One of the GCIC PhD research commercialization beneficiaries speaking to participants about his project.

Mr. Alidu, who further bemoaned the situation where research works are kept on the shelf said the introduction of this module is to end the era where research work have not been experimented in solving the country's climate challenges.

“There is a skill set for developing research and packaging it on the market. The mandate of GCIC is to ensure that a lot of the work scientists are actually doing make it to the market as products that can be bought and used.”

“This will contribute to the economy. We are therefore looking forward for more collaboration with industry and researches so that the work that our scientists embark on do not go waste, he added.

Some products of the cohorts on display.

What GCIC does

GCIC is a pioneering business incubator with a unique focus of developing SME ventures and entrepreneurs in Ghana's 'Green Economy'.

It operates on five key economic sectors thus, energy efficiency and renewable energy, solar power, climate smart agriculture, domestic waste management, water management and purification.

Executive Secretary of GCIC, Rukayatu Sanusi taking inductees through GCIC’s bouquet of services.

GCIC is funded by a grant from the governments of Denmark and the Netherlands through the World Bank, and is managed by a consortium led by Ashesi University.

Other donors include Ernst and Young, SNV Ghana and the United Nations University.

---citinewsroom