Participants listening to the presentation. INSET: Prof Paul Sarfo-Mensah, Senior Research Fellow at the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development, KNUST.
Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited (GGBL) has held a stakeholders’ workshop to showcase and assess the socio-economic impact of their Local Raw Material (LRM) sourcing initiative on Ghana’s economy.
The stakeholder workshop is held bi-annually to review the impact of the company’s LRM agenda on government and the communities in which GGBL operates.
Sharing key findings of the socio-economic study, Senior Research Fellow at the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prof Paul Sarfo-Mensah, said 25,000 small holder farmers spread across seven regions directly benefited from GGBL’s LRM initiative.
Together with their dependents, the initiative has impacted an estimated 175,000 lives over the last three years, representing a 138 percent increase in lives impacted from 2013 – 2015.
Other beneficiaries in the supply chain included hired labour, transport and other service providers, among others.
Gavin Pike, Managing Director of GGBL said, “From a modest 12 percent LRM use in 2012, Guinness Ghana’s LRM usage has grown to 48 percent, impacted the lives of more than 25,000 farmers.
He added that “our target is to source 70 percent of local raw materials by 2020 which will have an incremental impact on the communities in which we operate.”
Dr. Nurah Gyiele, Minister of State in-charge of Agriculture, who was keynote speaker said, farmers have to start thinking and moving towards commercial farming to ensure there is sustainable livelihood improvement.
To make this happen, the appropriate policies must be developed and implemented.
It is for this reason that the NPP government launched the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ programme, as well as the One District One Factory initiative.”
In October 2015, GGBL presented the progress made in developing the LRM supply chain to key stakeholders and shared the findings of a baseline socio-economic impact assessment undertaken by Deloitte-UK and the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development (BIRD) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
Corporate Relations Director of GGBL, Gabriel Opoku-Asare, said GGBL remains committed to its vision of generating long-term business value with locally and sustainably sourced raw materials.
A business desk report