Ghana’s sanitation coverage stands at 15% – this means that only 15 in every 100 Ghanaians have access to sanitation facilities and services. The challenges to sanitation in Ghana (and other developing countries) are linked to the inability to create proper disposal points for solid waste, lack of sanitation technologies among other reasons.
With Ghana’s increasing population, wastewater treatment plants are having a hard time keeping up and only 25% of the urban wastewater generated is treated with the remaining wastewater discharged into the open drains untreated.
Trimark Aquaculture Centre, founded by Mark Yeboah Agyepong, recovers nutrients from wastewater for fish culture. Currently, Trimark Aquaculture is treating wastewater from the Chirapatre Estate in Kumasi, Ghana and using the nutrients recovered in the rearing of the African Catfish.
Recognized for their outstanding effort in the management of urban liquid waste using innovative technologies, partnerships and financing models, Trimark Aquaculture Centre won the ultimate prize- $100,000- for Private Partnerships with MMDAs (Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies) at the Sanitation Challenge Awards 2019 in Accra, Ghana.
The Sanitation Challenge for Ghana challenges Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to work with their citizens, innovators and solvers to design and implement liquid waste management strategies to transform the livelihoods of Ghana’s urban centers.
In December 2018, with a $40,000 Proof of Concept Grant from the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre (GCIC), Trimark Aquaculture Centre is working to re-engineer the waste treatment plant at Chirapatre Estate in Kumasi, Ghana, conduct water testing and fish production trial for one production cycle.
Congratulations to Mark and the Trimark Aquaculture Centre team from the GCIC.
GCIC is a pioneering business incubator with a unique focus of developing SME ventures and entrepreneurs in Ghana’s ‘Green Economy’. Their mission is to develop and support an exceptional set of transformational ventures and entrepreneurs who are pioneering adaptive and mitigating solutions for climate change issues in Ghana. They focus on five key economic sectors (energy efficiency & renewable energy; solar power; climate smart agriculture; domestic waste management; water management and purification). The services provided by GCIC includes the provision of premium business advisory and business mentoring services, technical support in the development, prototyping, and testing of their innovation, as well as financial Proof of Concept grants to qualifying SMEs within our incubator.
