The Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has awarded three lucky winners of the Export Project Competition in a ceremony held in Accra on Wednesday.
Jeffery Osei Bonsu, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ignite Farms emerged as the winner of the competition for his excellence innovation for introducing “an easy to open” method of his product – coconut – to enable consumers have easy opening of the product. He was presented with dummy cheque of Ghc10,000.
The remaining winners include Abraham Allotey, (CEO) of Allotey Bee Farms and Bright Aferi, Co-founder of Hill Bill Shoes who emerged as second and third runners up respectively and were presented with dummy cheque of Ghc2,000 and Ghc3,000 in similar terms.
The Export Project Competition was launched last September in Koforidua in the Eastern Region as an initiative by the Authority to enable the youth come out with various innovative proposals for export projects that can be implemented to enable the country earn export revenues.
This is part of activities marking the 50th anniversary celebrations of GEPA. A total of thirty applications covering various project areas applied. A panel of judges was constituted to evaluate the applications which were received based on set criteria. Six were shortlisted and candidates called to defend their project proposals.
Speaking during the ceremony, CEO of GEPA, Dr. Afua Asabea Asare insisted that the Authority is committed to extend similar support to applicants who did not make it to the final round of the competition, stressing that such applicants also deserve commendation.
“We believed that this methodology was very useful one as it offered the opportunity to each of the six persons to interact directly with the judges and bring clarity to their export ideas”, she reiterated, adding that any youth who had export ideas and proposals to contact GEPA’s offices nationwide for the necessary support and handholding.
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