Young People urged to champion Sustainability through Scientific Innovations

Young people in Ghana have been challenged to find smart solutions to the problems that confront the world by leveraging emerging opportunities such as the Artificial Intelligence amongst other technology tools.

The Deputy Director and Advisor in charge of SDG at the Office of the President, Dr Felix Addo-Yobo made the call at MTN Ghana’s Sustainability week conversation in Accra on Thursday.

He was optimistic that “the youth have the brains and the energy to innovate to solve rising challenges bedeviling society”.

“There is slow deployment of Science and Technology within our development space. If we deliberately apply science and technology, we can come up with Innovative solutions in the area of sanitation, education and healthcare among others. The currency for development now is innovation and doing things in a smart way”, he stressed.

The MTN Ghana’s Sustainability week conversation was held on the theme; “From Compliance to Opportunity: Embedding ESG in Business”.

It centered on the Environment, Social and Governance bit in businesses, Sustainable Development Goals, Water and Sanitation among others.

Resource persons included; Dr Felix Addo-Yobo, Deputy Director and Advisor in charge of SDG at the Office of the President, Bernard Owusu Ansah, Manager, Governance, Risk and Compliance, KPMG and Mina Pokuaa Agyemang, Participant Engagement and Outreach Manager, UN Global Compact-Ghana.

Dr Addo-Yobo indicated that “the key barrier to implementing the SDGs has to do with access to finance but if we’re able to package our projects and make it attractive to investors, we’ll not struggle with funding”.

He maintained that the practice of ESG  had been in the Ghanaian space for sometime and that for every project, it was mandatory to do the environmental and social impact assessment.

“That is one of the things we do as a government, especially for project based initiatives”.

He touched on water and sanitation and indicated that “Ghana is doing well when it comes to basic water services but there are issues about service delivery, which include the quality of water flowing through the taps”.

“The trend now in Ghana is that a large number of households use sachet or bottled water and that is not a good practice because the quality of the water might be questionable and the waste associated with the plastics is enormous”.

“Unfortunately, in that regard, we are heading in the wrong direction”, Dr Addo-Yobo underscored.

He therefore called for the need to address the water delivery system.

“Truth be told many of the infrastructure are old and need to be renovated in order to provide the level of service required”.

“Everyone has a role to play to safeguard our planet. We can do that in the area of energy efficiency, water efficiency and avoiding paving the whole of our compounds to allow water to pass through the land in a bid to creating a sustainable society”.

“This is where the Youth can come in with scientific innovations to address emerging challenges in the world”.

The Manager in charge of Governance, Risk and Compliance at KPMG, Bernard Owusu Ansah stated that “the way government machinery pushes some of the big companies when they make the least mistake, if the same is meted out to small scale mining companies amongst others, we won’t be experiencing some challenges like galamsey”.

He called on all not to create too much waste and also reuse and recycle waste to impact society positively, hoping all would play their role effectively.

The Participant Engagement and Outreach Manager, UN Global Compact-Ghana, Mina Pokuaa Agyemang urged companies to leverage technology and AI tools to solve Sustainability challenges and integrate ESG tools into their business strategies.

The Chief Corporate Services and Sustainability Officer at MTN Ghana, Madam Adwoa Afriyie Wiafe, indicated that MTN Ghana had an ambition to drive sustainability and ESG in every facet of the company, hence, the numerous interventions to complement Ghana’s development.