‘Horticultural Industry potential under-utilised’

Giftie Sefa-Boakye, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Alpha Beta Flora, has expressed unhappiness about the underutilization of the horticultural industry.

According to her, although the industry has the potential of creating a lot of jobs for the youth, it has not yet been explored.

Ms Sefa Boakye, who was speaking in an interview with BUSINESS GUIDE in her office in Accra said, “The horticulture industry is a very huge industry that is waiting to be explored,”

She called on government to put right measures in place to ensure that the youth venture into horticulture.

“By now Ghana should have been on the horticultural world map because we have all it takes to be there.

“We have the land and the weather too is good for the cultivation of almost all tropical agricultural produce,” she said.

Ms Sefa Boakye, who is also an entrepreneur, said the lack of land for horticulture has always been a problem in Ghana, urging government to make lands available for cultivation.

She appealed to government to support the deployment of extension officers to help farmers in their activities, stating that “with proper support from extension officers, farming will be easy and attractive for everyone, especially the youth.

Ms Sefa Boakye said Alpha Beta started as food services and catering in 1989 and developed slowly into floral company in 1990.

She said her outfit was the first to introduce office floral arrangement in Ghana, noting that “we

started with Lufthansa Airlines, British Airways, Unilever, among others.”

Ms Sefa Boakye said the company is also into landscaping, floristry, floral produce, horticultural produce and decoration, adding, “We are always trending, doing what is in voque.”

Our decorations are unique, we blend everything with nature. We give our customers natural feeling of their environment.

We love to use the indigenous plants and flowers for our decorations as compared to the foreign ones because they are more robust, Ms Sefa Boakye said.

“The best way to do decoration is to use the natural things such as plants, trees, stones, rocks, woods and sea stones. These create a natural environment.

“The natural plants gives us oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide which is good for our health,” she said.

Explaining further, Ms Sefa Boakye said, “We don’t feel we have competitors but rather we have other colleagues in the industry.

“This is not bothering us at all because we can’t serve everyone in the country.”

She also revealed that their services were very affordable.