When the Technologies Consultancy Centre (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah College of Science and Technology (KNUST) invited all fascinated folks to attend the Initial Countrywide Workshop on Beekeeping in Kumasi in January 1981, there assembled a band of pioneers who by their afterwards achievements proved them selves to be fairly excellent people today and amazing figures. Some of these have been foreigners: British inhabitants in Ghana and US Peace Corps volunteers, but the guy who developed the biggest apiary and reached the greatest business accomplishment was a Ghanaian cocoa and oil palm farmer, Akwesi Addai.
In Ghanaian terms Akwesi Addai was previously a rich male, owning a number of hundred acres of oil palm and cocoa plantations at Nsoatre, a village in close proximity to Sunyani, the funds of Brong-Ahafo Region. Having said that, his purpose in taking up beekeeping was not only to even further boost his possess wealth but to play a role in the financial enhancement of his community by generating new enterprise and work chances.
Akwesi Addai took up beekeeping with the recently introduced Kenyan best-bar hive with these types of power and enthusiasm that by 1985 he was manufacturing 82 gallons of honey a 12 months from 60 hives. Soon after building up his apiary to 100 hives he shed all but 32 in a forest fireplace in 1989. Nonetheless, from all those 32 hives in 1990 Akwesi Addai harvested 132 gallons of honey. By the mid 1990s, the apiary experienced expanded to 300 hives and the honey was remaining stored in 44 gallon oil drums and sold to traders from over the border in Cote d’Ivoire.
Akwesi Addai bought his 1st several beehives from carpenters in Kumasi properly trained by the TCC but he quickly made the decision to manufacture beehives in Sunyani. With a saw bench from SIS Engineering Ltd in Kumasi, a carpentry store was founded in a compact informal industrial area in the vicinity of Sunyani market place. In this article Akwesi Addai designed beehives for his possess use and for sale to other people today trying to find to be beekeepers. He encouraged other folks to just take up the exercise by offering on-the-position schooling in his have apiary and usually donating the first hive to give a young person a traveling start off. A person of his apprentices, Alex Sarkodie, constructed up an apiary of 40 hives and inevitably grew to become the beekeeping extension officer of the Sunyani ITTU. An additional, Mr E K Kwapong, a bank supervisor, ongoing as a beekeeper and a beekeeping promoter right after transfer from Sunyani to Tamale and Accra.
Akwesi Addai’s speak to with the TCC and SIS Engineering encouraged him to create far more smaller scale industries. He commenced with the invest in of presses and boiling tanks to develop palm oil from the fruits of his oil palm plantation. Later on, he additional tools to transform some of his palm oil into laundry cleaning soap. From SIS Engineering he purchased corn mills to grind corn and grating equipment to generate gari, a popular food stuff created from dried and partly fermented cassava. He recognized a bread bakery for his wife. Then realising that he was functioning many mechanical equipment which could require to go to Kumasi for mend he established up a blacksmithing and repair service workshop to finish his self-sufficiency in Sunyani.
Every single undertaking started out by Akwesi Addai furnished employment and instruction opportunities for other users of his group. Some others began to adhere to his direct and an Affiliation of Smaller-Scale Industries of Brong-Ahafo Area was set up with Akwesi Addai as the very first chairman. He also served as chairman of an Desire Group established up to get ready for the establishment of an Intermediate Engineering Transfer Device (ITTU) in Sunyani, and when the Sunyani ITTU was opened in December 1990 Akwesi Addai grew to become a member of its Regional Advisory Board. By that time Akwesi Addai had been performing with the TCC for 10 years: a decade of intensive entrepreneurial exercise that demonstrated what area leadership could attain in phrases of financial enhancement. Beekeeping for Akwesi Addai was not only an end in itself but also a suggests to a significantly broader involvement in assistance to his community.