Agri-impact in its line of duty providing advisory services to private sector has noted the gap in skills set between graduates and expectations of private sector entrepreneurs. Even though graduates face significant employment challenges, there are also good employment opportunities in the private sector for which the skills gap has become a disincentive for hiring. The teeming unemployed youth if properly oriented with tools and skills will adequately prepare them for future opportunities.
Agri-impact acknowledges that the youth serve as a great resource for the private sector and national socio-economic development. The need for a structured program involving public-private partnerships to bridge the knowledge and skills gap cannot be overemphasized. It is against this backdrop that Agri-Impact Consult (AIC) in Partnership with the National Service Secretariat (NSS) is rolling out a graduate entrepreneurship program, dubbed “NSS Graduate Skills Enhancement and Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Project”.
This historic partnership seeks to establish a working relationship aimed at providing unparalleled technical opportunities to graduates, youth, and women to build their technical, managerial, and vocational capacities to fit into the job market. They would be better equipped to take advantage of business opportunities in the agribusiness and SME landscape.
With the support of Ghana EXIM Bank, AIC has championed the upscaling of Greenhouse Technology in Ghana under the Youth in Greenhouse Enterprise Project which has seen the establishment of 200 (640sqm each) Greenhouses across the country; effectively 13 hectares of vegetable production under intensive cultivation.
This has provided jobs to over 800 Ghanaian youth. Additionally, AIC has partnered Delphy and other Dutch companies to install a 5,000sqm semi-automated greenhouse for production, research, and training purposes. Agri-Impact has been involved in the agribusiness and industrialization agenda by supporting the Ghana Exim Bank and providing monitoring and business advisory services to over 70 firms financed by the Bank under the 1D1F program. AIC, with the support of AGRA, has also implemented the Small Holder Inclusive Productivity and Market Access (SIPMA) project which sought to enhance competitiveness in the maize and soy value chains and has impacted ted over 100,000 smallholders in the Bono and Northern regions of Ghana.
AIC swooped six awards at the recently held Agribusiness Excellence and Leadership Awards organized by the Ghana Chamber of Agribusiness and notable amongst them was the Agribusiness Project Management and Consulting firm of the year awards.