Adonten Senior High School Aburi has emerged winner at this year’s National Business Pitch Competition organized by Junior Achievement Ghana.
The team could not hide their emotions after weeks of pitching entrepreneurial innovative ideas to judges. They made it to the finals after securing their place in the top fifteen out of the initial forty schools that were competing. They then went on to emerge winners afterward.
Their final pitch wowed the judges and helped them beat stiff competition from fifteen other schools including Aburi Girls SHS, Archbishop Porter Girls SHS, Bolgatanga SHS, Ghana SHS – Koforidua, Keta SHS, Legacy Girls College, Northern School of Business, Tamale, Presbyterian Boys Secondary – Legon, Presbyterian Senior Tech. School – Adukrom, St. Thomas Aquinas SHS, Tarkwa SHS, and Tema International School.
The competition encompassed four stages: Company Reports, Stage Pitches, Trade Booth, and Board Room sessions, culminating in an exhilarating Awards ceremony.
The winners, Adonten SHS’ startup, PELB Company came up with a portable electronic lunch bag that warms food to solve the problem of eating cold and unhealthy foods at workplaces and schools.
Orielly Senior High School from Accra and St. Francis Girls Senior High School from Jirapa (Upper West Region) claimed the first and second runner-up positions, respectively. Orielly impressed the judges with their ZestyBlends tea company, renowned for crafting lemongrass-based teas. St. Francis Girls made their mark with B&B Plastics Company Limited, a venture dedicated to recycling plastic waste into molded blocks, beads, and other products to combat plastic pollution in the country.
Under the theme “Breaking Barriers”, the competition was held with the aim of tasking young senior high school students to take up entrepreneurial skills and produce a product or service that can solve the challenges in the country.
The winning school will represent Ghana on the African stage at Rwanda, and Kigali in December 2023, and further to the global stage.
O’Reilly Senior High School also picked the awards of “Most Understanding in Business Management and Excellence in Team Work,” Tarkwa Senior High School won the “Tech Innovative Award,” Keta Senior High School bagged the “Entrepreneurial Spirit Awards,” St. Thomas Aquinas picked the “Social Impact” Award, with Aburi Girls Senior High winning the “Public Choice Award”.
The National Business Pitch Competition is an annual celebration of the ingenuity and achievements of high school entrepreneurs and innovators in Ghana.
The National Business Pitch Competition, JA Ghana’s version of the renowned international JA Company of the Year competitions, empowers students to collaborate with business-savvy volunteers, guided by their teachers, to launch businesses that provide innovative products and services addressing community needs or challenges. Student teams progress through local, national, and multinational levels, showcasing their products and services at trade fairs and presenting their businesses on stage before esteemed judges.
During the event, Rev John Ntim Fordjour, Deputy Minister for Education, emphasized the pivotal role of entrepreneurship education in addressing Ghana’s growing youth unemployment challenge. He lauded JA Ghana’s mission to bridge this gap and expressed his inspiration at the innovations presented by these high school entrepreneurs. He looked forward to a future where young Ghanaians would establish businesses and industries tackling pressing community issues and generating employment opportunities.
Abeiku Greene, Executive Director at JA Ghana, commended the students for their dedication and ingenuity. He recognized them as architects of the future, visionaries, disruptors, and pioneers with the power to reshape Ghana’s economy and society. He reiterated JA Ghana’s mission to empower Ghanaian youth, enabling them to nurture entrepreneurial ideas, refine their skills, and manage their earnings to secure better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities. He appealed to Corporate Ghana to support the competition and play a crucial role in Ghana’s most influential youth skill development movement.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Bernice Mensah
