Botswana finance minister visits Jospong Group’s waste treatment plants
The team visited the Sewage Systems Ghana Limited (SSGL) where they were shown how Ghana turns its liquid waste into an end product of clear water
A delegation from Botswana led by the Minister of Finance, Peggy O. Serame, has paid a working visit to the Jospong Group‘s solid and liquid waste treatment plants in Accra.
The team visited the Sewage Systems Ghana Limited (SSGL) where they were shown how Ghana turns its liquid waste into an end product of clear water that can be used for irrigation, car wash, and aquaculture as well as the production of compost for organic fertiliser.
The MD of SSGL, Florence Cobbold, said her outfit in collaboration with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) with support from the European Union has commissioned a research into using the clear water by-product for large scale irrigation purposes.
“We are expecting results from the research in 2024, so for now we use most of the recycled water within the plant,” she said.
“We are also leveraging the research to create and improve the acceptance of liquid waste recycled products in Ghana,” she added.
Growth
Cobbold said that Ghana before the advent of the company was discharging its untreated liquid waste into the sea. This, she said, posed a lot of environmental challenges, especially for the people living around the Korle Lagoon and its environs .
“But the plant has enhanced a cleaner, healthier and odour-free environment for the people within the community,” she said.
The plant has a design capacity of 3000m3/day with an averagely 300 trucks visiting the plant daily.
The plant has an ISO certified well-equipped laboratory to ensure that its activities are well within the standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA).
Since its establishment, SSGL has built additional faecal treatment plants at Kotoku and rehabilitated the Mudor Sewerage Treatment Plant also in Accra.
The team later visited the Accra Compost and Recycling Plant (ACARP).
The Plant Manager, Malik Kwabla Ganyo, who welcomed the team explained that the plant is an integrated waste processing and recycling company established to receive and process solid waste and produce organic manure for agronomic purposes in Ghana and West Africa.
He added that the plant also addresses the problem of plastic waste through sorting, processing and recycling of such waste.
“We produce high quality pelletised plastics as raw materials to feed local industries for further production into various plastic items.”
He added that other recovered materials such as textiles, packaging materials and other highly combustible materials are used to manufacture high calorific burning material/fuels (refuse derived fuels) for specific industries that require such energy for their operations.
“We understand that in Botswana, little is done with regard to waste treatment but our value proposition to them is that we need to do some form of recovery on the value chain as well as valurize the specific streams of their waste to extend the life span of their landfills.
“We can process their plastic waste into pellets to feed industry and also process their solid waste into organic fertilizer to improve agriculture,” Ganyo said.
For her part, the Finance Minister of Botswana Serame was quite impressed with how the two subsidiary companies of the Jospong Group are helping to manage Ghana’s liquid and solid wastes.
She admitted there was a lot of potential for the company to invest in other countries, especially in southern Africa where they are also experiencing challenges with waste management.
“I came to see what they do so we can learn first hand and what may be required for them to set up in Botswana,” she said. “We have an issue of waste management that needs to be addressed, while at the same time make returns from it.”
“Also the growth of the company over the years is very impressive and it is very commendable to see Ghanaians at the management level.”
The chief corporate communications officer of the Jospong Group, Sophia Kudjordji, said the group is looking forward to venturing into new areas.
“We believe that being the biggest in the sub-region we have what it takes, we have built capacities to be able to impact other countries that’s why we invited them to see what the group has to offer.
“We are more into the circular economy where we have gone beyond just the disposal of waste but we recycle and add value to waste and we want other African countries to appreciate,” she said.
The group is currently in Angola, Zambia, Togo, Sierra Leone among others.
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