• Sharon busily processing some cassava

 One advantage that is at the dis­posal of today’s entrepreneurs is innovation.

The scientific community today has created a platform for innovation especially among young people.

So, the current generation of young men and women who venture into entrepreneurship are making things through technology and inno­vation.

In the face of the current econom­ic turbulence, there have been calls on government to ban or look into the importation of goods that can be lo­cally produced to improve the market in Ghana.

Interestingly, there are young entrepreneurs already in the system adding value to the locally produced goods and one such inspiring innova­tor is 32-year old Sharon Ayertey Yom­le who is defying all odds at Dodowa to add value to gari.

Sharon grew up at Dodowa in the Greater Accra Region and attended Krobo Girls Senior High School in the Eastern Region where she studied Business and later graduated from the University of Cape Coast with a first degree in Commerce in 2019.

She, like most young Ghanaians, was attracted to securing a corporate job after school though she had a business plan.

Interacting with The Spectator , Sharon intended to start this project during her retirement but she was privileged to join the British Council and Giz Jobs in Africa incubation pro­gramme in 2019.

According to her, the idea to start Yomle Foods was born at the pro­gramme when one facilitator advised her to start from somewhere.

The advice ignited some passion in her to take that step with the little resources she had.

The first resource at her disposal started her first product, Yommy Gari and it was welcomed on the market.

Subsequently, she added the Soya Gari Mix, Tombrown, Rice Cereal Mix, Ginger Powder and others.

She stated that Yomle Foods sought to be a sustainable food pro­duction hub as she planned to give more income to rural farmers and women by engaging their services in producing these products.

This, she said, would give them a livelihood and a market for their farm produce.

Ms Yomle admitted that as a graduate of the just-ended acceler­ation programme, Orange Corners, organised by the Netherlands Embassy and its partners between March and August this year, it has given her a whole idea of the future direction of Yomle foods in the next five years through the pragmatic steps in place to achieve that.

She explained that as small-scale business, she encountered many fund­ing challenges.

She cited for instance, the prices of raw materials, packaging materials and penetrating the current market with the products to be daunting.

Though faced with these chal­lenges, she is grateful to the Ghana Enterprise Agency for being available and providing entrepreneurial support financial literacy training to young businesses.

She noted that there had been meetings and suggestions in the soya beans value chain and hopes the gov­ernment would listen to these tabled concerns of those in the value chain and provide the needed solutions to stop the increment in the prices of such products to enable small-scale businesses to stay in business.

Ms Yomle stated that the impor­tation of soya for instance, had been causing a price hike in soya beans so local small businesses like hers and those in soya oil production and other soya based products were forced to use more capital on raw materials but was optimistic about government’s intervention.

From Ken Afedzi, Dodowa