Meet Sefa Gohoho Boatin, an alumnus of The London School of Economics and one of the Ghana Climate Innovation Centre’s female entrepreneurs. Her company, Arela chemicals, which is cofounded with Charles Boatin and Dewey Mair  innovates on waste-to-chemicals by converting agricultural residue into food grade carbon dioxide for carbonated beverages and compressed natural gas for the energy production.

The main agricultural residue used by Arela is maize. In Asante Akim North District, where the Arela manufacturing plan is, there are over 200 farmers who grow maize for a living. Their Maize waste is usually burnt as their way of clearing their land after harvest, and this is a major cause of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, because the burning of maize stover injectes close to 30,000 tonnes of small particulate matter into the atmosphere.

Before Arela, Sefa served as the Corporate Affairs and Institutional Advancement Manager for former President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative Regional Leadership Center, West Africa. An expert in brand building, and capacity building, she has a demonstrated experience in and building close, long-term, partnerships with the founders and managers of various portfolio companies and organizations.

Her first taste of entrepreneurship started 15 years ago with  Eden N’ Eve, a Flower farm which only employs women, to reclaim the role of women in development.

For sefa, When Dewey and Charles starting talking about a business that had a positive impact on the environment, there was no second thoughts because “it’s very natural and easy as a woman, to be concerned about the environment, because women are intrinsically linked to nature. Even once a month, our bodies are controlled by the moon, like the tides are controlled by the moon. So with that in mind, it is impossible for me to be involved in business without thinking of the effects of the business on the environment”.

The second reason Sefa says she and her co-founders started Arela, and Sefa explains that this motive is very personal to her, was to ensure that women have a meaningful place in this business. Women are usually marginalized in our communities, and yet they are some of the most efficient contributors to households, communities, and the economy – and they want to be part of the solution to improving their lives. Besides, it’s the women who actually are the first victims of environmental degradation, because they are the ones who fetch water, so if there is no water, it is them who walk for hours looking for water. They are the ones who fetch firewood. They are the ones who produce food for their families. So it’s easy for them to explain when the environment is degraded and to persuade them to take action, because they can see where it will impact them directly positively.

And Sefa is still very excited at the prospect of the impact of Arela, not only because it provides a product that would be 40% cheaper than what the beverage companies are currently buying, but also they will sustain Arela’s plant with our own biogas, help save the planet, and support the community’s development. The triple bottom line! She calls it

The balancing, or imbalancing, act of being a woman entrepreneur