Guinness Nigeria Plc. along with four other multinational organisations partnered with the United Nations World Food Programme at the launch of the Zero Hunger Roundtable.
The Zero Hunger Roundtable is a multi-sector forum aimed at collectively addressing food challenges as part of the UN’s global mandate to achieve Zero Hunger by the year 2030.
The initiative and the backing it receives will help to support and contribute to Nigeria’s own efforts at achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 – which aims to bring an end to hunger.
The launch is a culmination of several weeks of rigorous screening processes where young Nigerian start-ups were given opportunities to pitch their innovative and practical ideas toward tackling the hunger problem in the country to a team of investors with the top 5 ideas winning N21,000,000 each.
While addressing the press and other dignitaries at the event, the Country Director, WFP Nigeria, Paul Howe, said: “What we saw at the Zero Hunger Innovation Sprint was amazing. The pitch showcased the incredible talent, energy and dynamism of young Nigerian entrepreneurs – and the Zero Hunger Roundtable is trying to harness this energy in a way that is socially beneficial and sustainable in addressing hunger challenges”.
Read Also: Fighting hunger in Nigeria: A call to action on individuals, businesses, and government
Corporate Relations Director, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Rotimi Odusola, speaking at the event said: “In terms of expectations from the Pitches today, we are looking for ideas that are scalable, ideas that will result in very impactful multiplication. Ideas that Small Holder farmers can utilize to exponentially multiply the impact of their activities on the country in a manner that begins to turn around the challenge of food security and hunger”.
Congratulating Jerry Oche of Zowasel – one of the winning Start-Ups at the event that Guinness Nigeria is supporting, Odusola added that “At Guinness Nigeria, we believe the most inclusive and diverse culture makes for better business and a better world; this continues to drive our passion to support initiatives such as the ones at the Zero Hunger Sprint which have the potential to give leverage to Small Holder farmers, especially including women and differently-abled individuals in under-served communities across Nigeria.”
He added: “Guinness Nigeria is pleased to be supporting Zowasel and the remarkable initiatives they have articulated especially to benefit small holder farmers that are female in furtherance of our commitment and focus on backward integration and local sourcing of raw materials for our production.”
Zowasel is a multi-sided marketplace that provides quality crop testing and connects small holder farmers with access to premium buyers, the Start-Up has a network of over 1.5million small holder farmers, over 1000 premium buyers and sellers and 25 Crop Test Centres.
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