On the 20th of October 2022, twenty-two (22) entrepreneurs were inducted as the 7th Cohorts of the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre (GCIC’s), business incubator. The induction ceremony marked the beginning of a new journey for the entrepreneurs, aimed at supporting their businesses and scaling up their efforts towards climate change mitigation and adaptation. The newly inducted entrepreneurs operate in five key sectors; 42% are climate smart agriculture businesses, 27% are into waste management, 15% are energy efficiency organizations, with the rest in the greening and solar energy sectors. All 22 entrepreneurs employ climate-smart and sustainable models in their operations
GCIC’s Cohort 7 is a truly diverse group comprising of businesses, located all over the country. 38% of the entrepreneurs are based in the Greater Accra Region, 27% in the Ashanti Region, 15% are from Western Region, whilst the Eastern Region, Central Region and the Volta Region and Upper Region make up 20 %.
As one of the focuses of the GCIC is on gender balance, this year, 50% of the entrepreneurs in the GCIC Business Incubator are women.
Over the next nine months, the entrepreneurs will receive among other benefits, business advice, mentoring, technical training, concept grants as well as research analytics on markets, competitors, and sector trends.
In her welcome address to the inductees, Ruka Sanusi, the Executive Director of GCIC stated that between June 2017 and 2020, GCIC had supported entrepreneurs to generate cumulative revenues of US$2.06m, created 733 new jobs, raised additional early and growth-stage financing of more than USD2m, and sequestered CO2 emissions of 14,500MT.
The GCIC’s Partnerships, Entrepreneurship, and Investment Director, Dramani Bukari, also took the entrepreneurs through the GCIC’s Technical and Product Development workstream and highlighted how the entrepreneurs can improve on their product innovation to meet global standards by using the support services offered by GCIC.
He said “The GCIC works to improve technologies and products, whilst stimulating climate risk mitigation and improving management practices. We also invested in ensuring that our cohorts grow climate resilient businesses”. He went on to say, “Our grants are available after application and involve the submission of evidence of the efficient and effective utilization of the awarded funds”.
Daniel Ababio, Senior Manager at EY Ghana (GCIC ‘s implementation partners for the Global Affairs Canada supported program) explained the Monitoring and Evaluation process implemented by EY to help track the growth of businesses to the Inductees during their time in the incubator.
“We look forward to sharing your success stories during and at the end of the program”. He said.
Each year, at the end of the induction ceremony, the cohorts are presented with asparagus fern potted plants to nurture and maintain as a metaphorical reminder of the dedication they will need to cultivate in order to grow their businesses during and after the business incubation period.
The Cohort 7 entrepreneurs will complete their tenure in June 2023.
