Israel exposes ‘Green Innovation’ winners to agribusiness opportunities

Winners of the ‘Green Innovation Competition’, second and third editions respectively, have expressed their overwhelming experience with the exposure to agribusiness opportunities and innovative ideas received from the visit to Israel as part of the prize package.

According to the 2020 and 2021 winners, the visit to Peres Centre for Peace & Innovation exposed them to the most cutting-edge Israeli start-ups working in the fields of agriculture, water, cyber technology, security, industry, food, smart transportation, clean energy, video gaming, medicine, science, and research on a largescale they had never imagined; and they were also offered the opportunity to learn from the best.

Founder and CEO of EBAPreneur Solutions, the 2021 winner, Maxwell Kojo Xonu, sharing his Israel experience, mentioned that as a social enterprise start-up which produces briquettes from waste organic materials from cassava and solar-drier fabrications, he was exposed to the use of advanced technology that can fast-track, turnaround time, and increase production capacity to produce on large-scale.

“Winning the competition and going to Israel is the biggest eye-opener for me, and the reason why I am putting in 300 times more effort than I used to. After touring the Peres Centre and seeing how they find ways to make everything possible in their country with technology, I am highly convinced that if they had the size of arable land Ghana has, they will be the leading producer of anything agriculture in the world.

“In summary, what this trip has done for me and my entire team, as a start-up agribusiness, is that it has opened our eyes to the potentials that this journey holds and how far it can go because we can now get access to quality materials to build world-class quality solar driers,” he said.

Touching on the real-time effects of this on their business, he stated that the biggest solar drier EBAPreneurs has built so far is about 10/7 metres, which can dry only about 250 kilograms of cassava in eight hours. But with the new ideas, knowledge gained, and technologies acquired, it can develop about 100/100 metres solar drier.

Furthermore, he emphasised that the aftermath will include a decrease in post-harvest losses, maximising revenue gains for farmers, creation of more jobs, protection of the environment by recycling waste by-products, and producing enough starch for the pharmaceutical industry, among others.

Corporate Lead and Co-founder of Sustainable African Youth Enterprise and Technologies (SAYeTECH), Jeffrey Boakye Appiagyei, the second edition winner in 2020, on his part, stated that the trip facilitated partnerships with Israeli companies to develop new products for the agribusiness brand that will be hitting the market soon.

Chief Executive Officer of Stratcomm Africa, organisers of the Ghana Garden & Flower Show, and co-partners of the Israeli Green Innovation Competition, Esther Cobbah, welcomed the winners back from Israel and indicated that her outfit will organise a communication skills workshop for the winners to groom them on how to evolve communication and information delivery around their innovations.

The fifth edition of the Green Innovation Competition is open for entries till 4th August, 2022.