AngloGold Ashanti Obuasi Mine has taken another significant step in enhancing the agro-industry of Obuasi by providing 30,000 oil palm seedlings to over 2,500 existing farmers of the produce across its host communities.
Mr. Emmanuel Baidoo, Senior Manager Sustainability of AngloGold Ashanti, made this known in a speech read on his behalf by Mr. Daniel Arthur-Bentum, Economic Development Superintendent of the company, at a ceremony to distribute the seedlings to the farmers at Adaase in the Obuasi Municipality.
Mr. Baidoo said the 30,000 oil palm seedlings constituted phase one of its Climate Resilient Oil Palm Project (CROPP), and formed part of the company’s 10-year Social Economic Development Plan (SEDP) initiated in 2022, in partnership with Solidaridad West Africa in five districts and one municipal in Adansi.
He said reclaimed galamsey sites across the district would also be taken care of in the distribution of the seedlings.
According to Mr. Baidoo, AngloGold Ashanti had invested a total of GH¢1.8 million into phase one of the project with the seedlings, valued at GH¢105.000.
The Obuasi East District Director of Agriculture, Mr. Osei Yaw, urged the various co-operative groups, which would manage the oil palm industry, to work hard to make Adansi a major oil palm-production destination in Ghana.
Nana Barima Nsu Antwi Kwaning II, Fomena Benkumhene, who represented the Adansihene, said oil palm had proved to be useful to humanity in so many ways, and urged the entire Adansiman to wholeheartedly embrace the mass production, spearheaded by AngloGold.
Speaking exclusively to The Chronicle later, Nana Edmundson Appiah, President of Obuasiman Oil Palm Growers and Marketing Society Limited, expressed his appreciation to AngloGold Ashanti for supporting mass production of oil palm in Adansi.
He pointed out that by this initiative, the company had demonstrated to Ghanaians that galamsey sites could be filled or reclaimed and planted with oil palm seedlings to make them useful.
He called on the teeming youth in Adansi not to shun the oil palm cultivation initiative, but rather embrace it.
From Frederick Danso Abeam, Adaase
