Dessert Lion International (DLI), a local agricultural input manufacturing company, has presented farming inputs valued at Twenty-Five Thousand Ghana Cedis (₵25,000) to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) as part of the collaboration between the two institutions.
Presenting the inputs to management of the University, Mr. Kwame Tweneboah Kodua, Chief Executive Officer of DLI, said as a corporate entity, his outfit has a ten-year collaboration with the University with the resolve to establish an internationally acclaimed factory.
Giving a background to the KNUST-DLI partnership, Mr. Tweneboa- Kodua explained that in 2016, under the leadership of Professor William Otoo Ellis, DLI signed a memorandum of understanding to boost agriculture in the country. He added “since then we have had a lot of support from the University in terms of technical support, research findings and we have been able to develop a lot of farming inputs/products”.
He said the collaboration had reached a stage where DLI want to scale up its activities to cover the entire country and the sub-region and would also want to engage in a private mass cocoa spraying exercise. He added that before embarking on the mass spraying exercise, DLI has decided to present the agricultural inputs to the University to use for close observation so as to identify any defects or areas of improvement which would gladly be taken on board when reviewing the inputs.
The DLI Chief Executive Officer believed that feedback and recommendation from the University would go a long way to help his vision of improving agriculture in Ghana and Africa through quality agricultural inputs.
Receiving the items on behalf of the University, Professor Kwasi Obiri-Danso, Vice Chancellor, thanked the donors for their support and indicated University-industry partnerships as one of the key activities of the University.
Professor Obiri-Danso said the collaborative efforts are laudable, most importantly as the agricultural sector is currently one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. He continued that looking at the products being presented, it will help grow the agricultural sector especially the cocoa sector.
He said going forward, the University would want most of students to be more involved in the industry with faculty and more student participation in helping to improve the products, helping to support extension services on the field, internships and research on products.
Professor Obiri-Danso, assured DLI of the University’s support to enable it to be recognised as one of the key industrial partners in the agricultural sector that is capable to meet the agricultural needs of the country in order to stem importation of agricultural inputs.
The items developed by Dessert Lion Company which were presented included Dl Tricycle 150cc, motorised and manual Pruners, farm boots, knapsack sprayers, blower, steel toe boots, helmet and googles. Other items were D Lion insecticide, D Lion bed bugs, industrial nose mask and weed slasher.