The third edition of the Green Entrepreneurial Awards Challenge, a challenge that seeks to inspire the youth to develop and pursue green business ideas to empower them to start-up initiatives has been held. The award supported by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany saw twenty teams applying by submitting business ideas. Out of these, two teams from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) had their business ideas selected for a grant award of €5000 each.

Dr. Emmanuel W. Ramde, Director of the Brew-Hammond Energy Centre, KNUST in his opening remarks stated that, the award ceremony was held purposely to honour the winners of this year’s challenge and to present them with grants. He further urged the winning teams to use the grant given them to build their business.

Professor Imoro Braimah, the Provost of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences who chaired the ceremony congratulated the winners for coming out victorious in the Green Entrepreneurship Award Challenge. He encouraged the winners not to dissociate themselves from their supervisors but rather hold fast their relationship. This he said will afford them the opportunity to tackle challenges while establishing and expanding their businesses.

Touching on the need for entrepreneurial universities in the country, he stated that it is prudent for universities to become entrepreneurial so that their students equipped with entrepreneurial skills would provide job opportunities. He hoped that this initiative would produce great entrepreneurs who would build empires to make the country a better place to live in.

The two teams that won the awards were EvaTech Ecooler Ventures and Nonafate Company Limited. The business of the former is to make fruits and vegetables storage easy and a delight for farmers and retailers through the provision of Ecoolers to curb post-harvest losses. The latter is to provide an efficient mechanised means of irrigation using energy from flowing water which is low in operational and maintenance cost.