Danquah Addo-Yobo, MD Yara Ghana
YARA Ghana Limited, a leading fertilizer company, has announced the appointment of Danquah Addo-Yobo as its first Managing Director.
Mr Danquah Addo-Yobo, until his elevation, was the Chief Financial Officer of the company.
He has reiterated the company’s commitment to bringing about sustainable agriculture.
A news release issued in Accra by the management of Yara Ghana quoted Mr Addo-Yobo as calling for support for local farmers who he said “much of Africa’s food security depends on them.”
The release said that “Yara as a farmer centric company will continue to support smallholder farmers in its operations as has been amply demonstrated over the past years through our several interventions aimed at increasing farmer knowledge, productivity and farmer profitability through the Yara Crop Nutrition Approach.”
According to the release, the Yara Crop Nutrition concept combines crop knowledge, product portfolio and application competence to deliver a differentiated and profitable solution to customers and farmers, whilst supporting a sustainable environment.
It said that ”Yara is focused on balancing the increasing intensity of agricultural production with the globally emerging environmental constraints like climate change, deforestation and water scarcity.”
“This concept has been prosecuted by Yara Ghana over the years through its network of agronomists across Ghana by providing technical support, training programmes and crop clinics for farmers, Agricultural Extension Agents (AEAs) and dealers in agro-inputs. The company intends to continue with this and indeed invest more into it through the recruitment of more agronomists,” the new MD is quoted as saying.
The release said that “Yara Ghana will strengthen its collaboration with research institutions such as the Crop Research Institute of Ghana (CRI), Savannah Agriculture Research Institute (SARI), Oil Palm Research Institute (OPRI), among others, to conduct scientific trials aimed at evolving cost-effective crop nutrition solutions and programmes for Ghanaian farmers.”
Yara recognizes the importance of women smallholder farmers in the rural communities and has initiated a programme dubbed; ‘One Step Forward’ targeted at supporting women smallholder farmers.
Details of this initiative will be rolled out during the year.
The release said that Yara’s interventions in the cocoa sector will be boosted by investing more into its Healthier Cocoa Campaigns which it said are a series of training programmes held for cocoa farmers annually on best farming practices to help improve the yield and quality of cocoa which translates into wealth creation for farmers.
“Increasing the farmer profitability in the cocoa sector has been of keen interest to Yara. This led Yara to collaborate in research that culminated in the launch of the first cocoa fertilizer in the country known as Asaase Wura after trials with the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG),” the release indicated.
It hinted that Yara Ghana is investing in a new terminal which will comprise warehousing facilities with modern bagging and blending machines and was expected to be complete before the end of this year.
Before joining Yara in 2014, Mr. Addo-Yobo had worked with the AP Moller-Maersk Group for 12 years during which period he had extensive cross functional experience and held senior roles across different functions in Ghana, Indonesia and South Africa.
Having held positions such as Financial Controller, Finance and Admin Manager, Africa Regional Business Controller, General Manager in Charge of Customer Service, with the AP Moller-Maersk Group, Mr. Addo-Yobo moved to join Vodafone Ghana as the Financial Controller from where he joined Yara Ghana as the Chief Financial Officer.
