The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Government of Japan signed an agreement to enhance the competitiveness of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) for Ghana’s economic and social development.

Ghana has disseminated Kaizen – a Japanese methodology and philosophy for continuous quality and productivity improvement at the shop floor over the last decade.

As such, hundreds of Ghanaian enterprises have introduced and still apply Kaizen practices, which helped them improve their performance. Still, to achieve a bigger national impact, the approach needs to be upgraded to sustainably improve the enterprises’ competitiveness.

Accordingly, with funding from the government of Japan and in coordination with the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA), UNIDO will implement its “Expanding the Kaizen initiative by enhancing sustainable agribusiness” project that, through the Organization’s digital dashboard system, will adress inter alia the economic performance, the resource efficiency, the environmental sustainability, and the social welfare of MSMEs.

Ultimately, the 3-year project will support Ghana in scaling up its national Kaizen initiative, and by extension enhance the performance of Ghanaian MSMEs.

The project will introduce “Smart and Sustainable Agri-Business (SSAB)” – an approach that collects key performance indicators to visualize the enterprises’ performance, also related to productivity, resource efficiency, food security/compliance and social welfare.

A pre-launch event was attended by Hisanobu Mochizuki, Japanese Ambassador to Ghana and Fakhruddin Azizi, UNIDO Representative to Ghana and Liberia.