Water engineering company, Jos Hansen Nigeria & Alga Africa, in collaboration with UNIDO/ITPO, is working on implementing sustainable practices to ensure efficient production and stop climate change.
At a one-day interactive session with the private sector in Lagos, indigenous firms and those of German origin or partnerships were able to showcase their goods and services.
Chairman of Jos Hansen Nigeria & Alga Africa, Des Braithwaite, said the event was to ‘rub minds to see how we can take our countries, our businesses and organisations and our collective selves further along the road to success’.
UNIDO, according to Braithwaite, is focused on ending hunger by helping businesses from farm to fork; stopping climate breakdown by using renewable energy, and energy efficiency to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions, as well as supporting sustainable supply chains so that developing country producers get a fair deal and scarce resources are preserved.
The Investment and Technology Promotion Office (ITPO), on the other hand, he said, provides services for potential investment partners and institutions, promotes sustainable technologies to potential beneficiaries; promotes investment and technology promotion tools.
Braithwaite, who hailed the Federal Government for being proactive and having a policy direction, noted that ‘this may not be enough except there is a conscious attempt to put round pegs in round holes’.
He added: “The president has been busy and there has been some unusual focus on Nigeria by the German government, and Jos Hansen Alga, being a company with German shareholding, holds dearly to these initiatives on both sides. We want to support these initiatives.
Deputy Head of UNIDO & ITPO Germany, Michael Smidth, said the gathering was timely going by the prevalent climate change, which calls for immediate action. He noted that the world cannot stop climate change by stopping industries, ‘but by finding ways of helping out, especially in the case of countries like Nigeria, where there are huge potentials’.
According to Smidth, UNIDO is ‘about finding the proper infrastructural development, developing energy, processing and capturing produce value in the country rather than exporting the raw materials’.
