L' Observateur Burundi

Guinness Ghana, the leading total beverage business in Ghana, has engaged some 14,000 students on underage drinking since October last year.

The campaign has so far reached students in the Volta, Greater Accra, and Eastern regions.

The legal age for alcohol consumption in Ghana is 18 under the Liquor Licensing Act of 1970 (Act 331).

According to a research on ‘Underage Alcohol Consumption in Ghana: A Threat to Child Welfare and Development’ by Sylvester Kyei-Gyamfi, more than six in ten children in the country have ever been drunk after consuming alcohol, and more than half the children, who reported ever taking alcohol were first initiated into consumption by friends.

He said the results showed that despite the existence of law, policy, and national institutional mechanisms in place, efforts made to regulate sale and consumption of alcohol among children had been a challenge.

Ms Sylvia Owusu-Ankomah, Corporate Relations Director, Guinness Ghana, said the underage drinking campaign, aimed at promoting po
sitive drinking under the Company’s ‘Society 2030’ agenda, would reach 20,000 young adults by December this year.

She said this in an engagement with editors in Accra on Tuesday.

Ms Owusu-Ankomah said the campaign was employing drama and role play to drive home the message on drug abuse and consequences of alcohol use on the underage.

She said another major strategy under the Company’s ‘Society 2030’ agenda was the preservation of water and that Guinness Ghana would replenish over 80,000 metric tonnes of water by June this year.

Ms Owusu-Ankomah said since 2020, the Company had, in collaboration with Water Aid, sited Water, Sanitation and Hygiene projects and facilities at markets and clinics in sorghum growing communities in parts of the northern region.

She said under the Company’s sustainability campaign, it had established community plastic collection centres and that it was going to schools, institutions, and communities to create a circular economy around plastics to safeguard the environment.

The
Company is also championing inclusivity with a STEM programme aimed at attracting young female graduates, whose capacities are built to work in the manufacturing sector.

Madam Felicite Nson, Managing Director, Guinness Ghana, said the Company, with 33 brands and 30 key distributors sourced about 70 per cent of its raw materials locally, emphasising that ‘our first priority is our people’.

She said the double-digit growth recorded on all strategic priorities was because of ‘portfolio expansion and commercial execution’.

Mr Justin Mollel, Finance Director, Guinness Ghana, said despite headwinds over the past year, the Company delivered very strong performance with over 383 per cent profit after tax.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Some Ghanaian companies have set their horizons beyond the shores of the country, making the entire African continent their target market under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Ghana has made significant inroads into East Africa, notably Kenya and Tanzania being among the seven countries selected to participate in the Guided Trade Initiative (GTI) of the AfCFTA Secretariat.

The GTI would enable Ghana to export over 700 AfCFTA certified products like cosmetics, processed foods, beverages, coconut oil, shea butter and garments.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo made this known when he delivered the 2024 message of the State of the Nation in Parliament on Tuesday, February 27.

‘I would like to make special mention of Kasapreko Company Limited, one of our iconic local beverage manufacturers, which has commenced exports to the Kenyan market,’ the President said, regarding the countries that had untilised the opportunity under GTI.

‘It is a fact worth celebrating that many other Ghanaian c
ompanies now have set their horizons way beyond the shores of our country and see the entire African continent as the market to aim at,’ he added.

The GTI is a pilot implementation phase aimed at ensuring acceleration in the operationalisation of AfCFTA by testing the institutional, legal and trade policy environment for the free trade agreement.

Together with the African Export- Import Bank (Afreximbank), the AfCFTA Secretariat also launched the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) to simplify and make transactions across the continent easy.

About 88.3 per cent of the Rules of Origin-a strategic framework for determining goods that qualify for preferential tariff treatment originating from the State parties under the AfCFTA- have also been negotiated.

The AfCFTA Secretariat has recognised Ghana as a shining example in the implementation of the continent’s free trade agreement.

Source: Ghana News Agency

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says the Government will work hard to meet domestic poultry production targets set for the year.

This will ensure that the country reduces its imports of poultry products and be food self-sufficient.

‘Poultry, obviously, requires extra attention, and that is exactly what we are doing. We have every intention of meeting the domestic production targets for poultry this year, 2024, and moving onto production levels that will lead to reduction in poultry imports,’ the President said.

He made the commitment when he delivered the State of the Nation Address 2024 (SONA) in Parliament on 27th February 2024.

This is in accordance with Article 67 of the 1992 Constitution, which imposes an obligation on him to deliver SONA at the beginning of each session of Parliament and before dissolution of Parliament.

The pledge to focus on poultry this year is because of the country’s failure to meet the 2023 targets it set for itself.

President Akufo-Addo said that to increase food suff
iciency in the country, government reviewed one of its priority programmes-Planting for Food and Jobs.

He noted under the review, a five-year agenda, which would see to the production of eleven products from September 2023 to December 2026 to ensure food security was put in place.

He indicated that all products – maize, rice, soybean, sorghum, tomato, pepper, onion, cassava, yam, and plantain – all yielded the expected production targets except poultry, hence the pledge to pay more attention to the industry.

‘Mr Speaker, there is no argument that food self-sufficiency is the basic requirement for national security and the foundation for building a prosperous nation. Last year, Government reviewed the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) Programme, which had been implemented since 2017.

‘The second phase of the PFJ sets out a 5-year agenda to ensure food self-sufficiency and resilience. Strategic targets have been set for eleven (11) priority products in the immediate term (September to December 2023), short t
erm (year 2024), medium term (2025 -2026), and the long term (2027-2028). The selected products are maize, rice, soybean, sorghum, tomato, pepper, onion, cassava, yam, plantain and poultry.

‘Mr. Speaker, I am happy to report that production estimates for these priority products revealed that the planned targets for the year have been exceeded for all the products, except poultry. Poultry, obviously, requires extra attention, and that is exactly what we are doing,’ he said.

Prior to this, some players in the poultry industry called on the President to implement sound policies for the growth of the sector.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Four persons have been confirmed dead after a tipper truck collided with a Ford transit passenger bus at Awutu Bereku on the Kasoa-Winneba highway.

Six others are in critical condition and have been transported to the St. Gregory Hospital at Buduburam.

The tipper truck with registration number GN 2820-21 was travelling towards Takoradi Direction and the Ford transit passenger bus with registration number GG 5447-22 was traveling towards Accra when the accident occurred on Tuesday.

One of the passengers, who survived the accident, Mr Nii Armah, told pressmen that the tipper truck lost control, veered off its lane and collided with their vehicle.

In his view the tipper truck driver was dozing off, leading to the accident.

Nii Armah, sustained cuts on the forehead while the driver of their vehicle died instantly.

He said all the four people died instantly while the critically injured were conveyed to the hospital for treatment.

Source: Ghana News Agency

The National Fisheries Association of Ghana (NAFAG) has expressed disappointment that the State of the Nation Address (SONA) presented by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo did not touch on the blue economy.

Mr Richster Amarfio, the vice president of NAFAG, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), said that even though the bigger blue economy was an emerging issue globally, the President did not touch on it, a situation he described as disappointing.

The blue economy has been defined by many bodies to encompass the economic activities of ocean resources, water bodies, and their interlinked sectors, aimed at their sustainable use for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and the preservation of the ocean ecosystem.

Mr Amarfio said the SONA failed to address how Ghana would develop, manage, and situate its blue economy to derive the best out of it, adding that even the state of the fisheries sector was not tackled.

‘We didn’t hear anything on the blue economy, the state of our fisheries sector,
inland fishing, or aquaculture development; neither did he touch on how we are going to rebuild our fish stock,’ he stated.

He said having a healthy ecosystem and quality water system was very important to promoting the sector, stating, however, that illegal mining, which is one of the ways of destroying water bodies and aquatic life, was also not given attention by the president in his address.

He stressed that building landing beaches as infrastructure was not the solution to the many problems in the sector, noting that ‘landing beaches without enough fish stock and with high costs of operations will not benefit sector players.’

Meanwhile, President Akufo-Addo stated during the SONA that he would open the Jamestown fishing harbour this year, adding that his administration would continue to take decisive actions, such as the close season, to help safeguard the ocean’s capacity to regenerate and to continue to deliver substantial economic, environmental, and social value for the country’s development.

He
said to help address the incidence of premix fuel diversion and hoarding, the government in 2023 completed the installation of 50 out of 300 premix fuel automated dispensers, promising that the remaining dispensers would be installed by September this year to help optimise the distribution of premix fuel.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Some women groups from four districts in the Upper East Region have received financial literacy training as part of efforts to help fight rising teenage pregnancy, child marriage and other sexual and reproductive health challenges affecting adolescents.

The training, organised by the Forum for African Women Educationalists Ghana (FAWE-GH), a non-governmental organisation, was to enable the women groups to acquire knowledge on financial management to enable them to expand their savings culture and invest in productive ventures to maximise profits to help cater for the needs of their adolescent children.

The groups comprised members of some Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) from the Kassena-Nankana and Builsa North Municipalities, and Kassena-Nankana West and Bongo Districts, where FAWE-GH was rolling out a five-year project to address sexual and reproductive health issues and gender inequality among adolescents.

It is part of the Global Affairs Canada sponsored project dubbed ‘Sexual Health and
Reproductive Education (SHARE)’ being implemented by a consortium led by Right to Play, WaterAid Ghana, FHI360 and FAWE-GH.

The project, among other things, seeks to advance gender equality through providing access to age-appropriate sexual and reproductive education and gender-responsive care for young people, particularly girls and young women.

Speaking at Navrongo during the training, Ms Dora Muchiah, the Programmes Manager, FAWE-GH, noted that the financial literacy training was part of efforts to contribute to making parents, especially women, economically independent to take care of the needs of their adolescent children.

She said issues of teenage pregnancy and child marriage resulting from transactional sex remained serious due to poverty and the inability of parents to afford the basic needs of their children, particularly girls and expressed the hope that the intervention would help to reduce the canker.

‘We noticed that most of the women groups are into the VSLA, so we trained them on how they
can strengthen their groups and increase membership, manage their monies, invest them wisely and be able to transact business with the banks, to be able to take loans to undertake certain initiatives.

‘Once these women are empowered and know how to use their money and are making a profit, they will be better positioned to support and provide the needs of their children, especially their adolescent girls,’ she said.

She said work in the communities had revealed that due to the inability of some parents to provide their adolescent girls’ needs such as sanitary pads, some males took advantage of the vulnerable state of the girls to ask for sex before helping them.

That, she said, had contributed to rising cases of teenage pregnancy with some pregnant girls compelled to marry at early ages, leading to school dropouts and other complications.

She advised the participants to use the knowledge to help improve their livelihoods and contribute to addressing challenges confronting the growth and development of youn
g people in their respective communities.

Ms Bridget Amoah, a participant from Vea in the Bongo District, thanked FAWE-GH and its partners for the training and noted that the knowledge acquired would be extended to many groups in her communities to help make maximum impact.

Source: Ghana News Agency