Mr Joe Mensah says his elevation to the position of Senior Vice President, and Head of the Ghana business unit of Kosmos Energy, is a demonstration of the company’s commitment to Ghana.
“We are not doing exploration now in the country. People say you are the best explorer out there so how come you are not doing it here. So this is the demonstration that we are here to stay and we want to do more,” he said.
Speaking in an interview with Times Business in Accra, Mr. Mensah, who was the Country Manager since joining the company in 2015, said “years ago, 100 per cent of our revenues was coming from Ghana. Ghana is the only place for Kosmos but now we have Equatorial Guinea, we have Senegal, Mauritania, Sao Tome, Ivory Coast and Gulf of Mexico. We have created business units and we need to align.”
He said the company was keen on contribution its quota towards the growth and development of the country.
Kosmos Innovation Centre
This, he said, had led to the introduction of the Kosmos Innovation Centre (KIC) which sought to invest in young entrepreneurs and small businesses with big ideas and want to see the country grow.
The KIC was established in Ghana in 2016 with programmes focused on inspiring and empowering young entrepreneurs in Ghana to drive change.
Since its inception, it has focused on innovation in agriculture the country’s most important sector and largest employer.
Why agric
“The reason why we settled on agric is because it is the main core of our country and it used to contribute more than 70 per cent of our GDP and it has dropped to about 19 per cent. The drop means we need to find an innovative way to put it on the growth path again,” he said.
Mr Mensah said the company had been impressed with the successes chalked so far with the KIC and was looking forward to doing more.
“We have interacted with over 400 entrepreneurs, created 14 companies and now we have others that just finished the programme last week are going to add to that. We have generated over 200 jobs and we have hundreds of innovators which is quite significant within a short period of time,” he said.
He said other blue chip companies were coming onboard to support the imitative describing it as a plus for Komos because other institutions were seeing the positive impact of the programme.
“Originally when we started, we said we will stay in there for about three years but now we are finishing our fourth year and it is really taking an exponential curve. We have other stakeholders who want to be a part of it. Mastercard, Stanchart PWC, are all want to be part of it, which is great,” he said.
He said “We didn’t have a company that was doing postharvest, it was one of the places where we had losses, the Israeli embassy came to us to work with us, take some of our companies to have exchange programmes with others in Israel. Once we have covered the entire value chain and then its steady and all these companies are up here and running, then we will think about stepping into another center.”
Innovation
On reasons why company had been stressing on innovation as the key to unlocking Ghana’s economic potentials he said “as a company we do not accept mediocrity and we ensure that everything we do has innovation at the core of it.”
He said innovation could propel the country to achieve the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda adding that being innovative gave a broader perspective to how things were done and provided an avenue to think through policies and initiatives before implementing them to get good results.
Awards
Commenting on the awards won at the Ghana Club 100 awards organised by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), as well as the Nobel International Business School (NIBS) Ghana Innovation Awards he said “the awards are a testament of the company’s consistent efforts to bring innovation and value in its operations in the country”
BY DAVID ADADEVOH
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