University of Ghana wins Enactus Competition
Enactus-University of Ghana (UG) has won the 2014 Enactus Ghana national competition. Enactus, formerly known as Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE), is an international non-profit organisation that brings together students, academics and business leaders committed to using entrepreneurial action to improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need.
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Guided by academic advisors and business experts, the student leaders of Enactus created and implemented community empowerment projects around the globe to transform lives and help students develop skills and attitudes that are essential for leadership.
2014 Enactus competition
This year’s competition brought together eight competing Enactus teams from various tertiary institutions across the country.
As part of the two-day programme, there was a Cocoa forum sponsored by the Hershey Company, during which stakeholders in the cocoa industry discussed and answered questions on challenges and new developments in the industry.
Projects
The competing institutions gave presentations on the community development projects that they had undertaken.
The national champions, Enactus-University of Ghana, presented three projects that they had undertaken.
Under the first project, christened Cocopays, they, with the help of resource persons from the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) trained cocoa farmers in a village called Nsutam in the Eastern Region in modern best farming practices such as fertiliser application and pest/weed control.
Enactus-UG also trained the cocoa farmers to use cocoa husks to produce local soap, popularly known as “Alata samina” which was packaged nicely for sale. This was adjudged as the Best Cocoa Project by the Hershey Company, sponsors of Enactus Cocoa projects.
The second project, “Korle Smiles”, involved the training of some unemployed and under-employed women in Korle Gonno, a suburb of Accra, in liquid soap making. The women now produce and sell the nicely packaged liquid soap as a source of livelihood.
The third project was called KwikStart. Under this project, Enactus-UG supported the Women’s Fellowship of the E.P. Church, West Volta Presbytery to improve the packaging and marketing of their Instant Hausa Koko product. This has resulted in a remarkable increase in sales.
Four institutions made it to the final stage of the competition. The University College of Management Studies (UCOMS) and the Ho Polytechnic were the first and second runners up respectively, while the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) placed fourth.
Enactus World Cup
As winners, the University of Ghana will represent Ghana at the Enactus World Cup in China between October 22 and 24, 2014.
The Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, H.E. Ms Sun Baohong, applauded the Government of Ghana for increasing inputs in the educational sector by setting up new schools and also instituting various programmes and foundations to support students to start businesses.
She advised students to put into practice whatever knowledge they were getting, foster entrepreneurship and create a more beautiful world through innovation, action and cooperation.
