Agro Ecom Ghana Limited, a leading licensed Cocoa buying company, has won a gold award and national recognition at one of the country’s most prestigious awards for business excellence―Ghana Business and Financial Service Excellence Award, 2018.
The event which was organised under the auspices of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MoTI), saw Agro Ecom honoured for their immense support to Ghana’s cocoa industry as well as their contribution towards the economic development in Ghana.
Receiving the award on behalf of the company, last Friday, in Accra, Country Manager for Agro Ecom, Mr. Muhammadu Muzzammil said the company may not have made such formidable stride if the company had not changed its initial purpose and made way for one of more essence.
“For a long time, we were working purely as a cocoa trader but we have changed our purpose to creating rural prosperity and ever since we changed our purpose to focusing more on the farmer and farmer interventions, it has led to several growth within the company,” he said.
According to Mr. Muzzammil, being bestowed with a ‘Gold’ honour only goes to say the company was on the right track and further pledged to remain committed to their purpose.
It is for this reason that he advised businesses to look beyond profit making and seek the good of their partners and the society at large.
The manager said “businesses should look at societal interventions adding that, “societal change is possible through businesses.”
Vibrant year for Cocoa
Speaking to the Publisher on the side-lines, Mr. Muzzammil noted that Ghana’s cocoa industry was bouncing back to life.
“Cocoa prices fell quite drastically and the industry was in turmoil but Ghana has done well by maintaining the farmers price…cocoa prices internationally have corrected,” he said.
From an initial $1900 per tonne, Mr. Muzzammil said cocoa was presently at $2500.
“So, we expect to see some relieve at least for the industry players..we are actually suffering and going on negatives and deficits,” he added.
CSRs
Agro Ecom has embarked on several Corporate Social interventions―giving back to a country that once opened her gates to it some 18 years ago.
In the past seven years the company had given back over $40 million through various interventions.
This, according to the country manager has been invested in sustainability programmes aimed at training the farmers to be empowered for future business prospects.
Agro ecom has also given over 5,000,000 cocoa seedlings to support farmers in the country.
Ecom is said to have built seven schools, instituted over 60 computer labs for basic schools and drilled over 260 boreholes in various communities with 60 more in the offing.
Over 13,000 children have also benefited from the Otumfuo-Agro Ecom Mobile Learning Platform, an ingenuity of the company.
Agro Ecom has a staff capacity of 600 full-time employees and individual engagement with over 6,000 stakeholders.
