ABOUT

Welcome to GEMS Group, a private conglomerate dedicated to sustainable environment, production, and consumer services. Our mission is to create a better future for all by promoting sustainable practices and providing high-quality products and services to our customers.

At GEMS Group, we believe in the power of collaboration and partnerships to achieve our goals. We work closely with our clients, suppliers, and other stakeholders to create value for everyone involved.

Our core values include innovation, excellence, integrity, and social responsibility. We strive to innovate and improve our processes and products to meet the changing needs of our customers and the society at large. We also uphold the highest standards of integrity and ethical behavior in all our operations.

We are committed to making a positive impact in the communities where we operate. Through our youth empowerment and job creation initiatives, we are helping to create a better future for young people and their families. We also provide interest-free loans to small and medium-sized enterprises to help them grow and prosper.

The Greener Environment and Materials Sustainability Initiative (GEMS) is an African regional Not-for-Profit Non-Governmental Organization with headquarters in Nigeria. GEMS was officially registered as an Entity in 2014 even though it has held maiden International Conference in 2011 at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife with participants including UNEP Delegates and African Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ARSCP) delegates from Kenya, Ghana and Uganda apart from local participants across Nigeria.

The second International Conference took pace at the Bells University, Ota in 2013 where the Communique included the decision to register the NGO as a legal Entity with the Corporate Affairs Commission. It was also resolved that there is the need to encourage commercialization of some of the major findings presented in the previous and current Conference not only as a means of promoting enterprise but as a means of showing that production could be made in a sustainable manner that would reduce impacts on air, water and land resources.

The Founder and President of GEMS then registered the Green Engineering Manufacturing and Services Ltd (GEMS) here in Nigeria in 2015 and a Subsidiary (GEMS Ltd) in Uganda in 2016 to promote regional access to values in East Africa.

The major objectives of GEMS include:

1. Advocacy for sustainable consumption of natural resources;
2. Protection of the environment through cleaner production processes along the whole value chain of Industrial and agricultural businesses;
3. Education through Workshops and Conferences in line with SCP;
4. Certificated training in programs that promote skills in youths in all aspects of sustainable development and environmental protection.
5. Funding and encouraging research and development in the promotion of Resources efficiency and Cleaner Production across Africa is our major means of providing Corporate Social Responsibility to our numerous members in academia, industries and enterprises.
6. Support for participation of qualified members to International and Local Conferences/Workshops, especially those relating to SCP, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA); and
7. Solving unemployment of youths in Africa through provision of skill-developing education through funded polytechnic and university education that would graduate competent employers of labor, entrepreneurs in agricultural sciences, engineering, health service sciences, etc

Towards the Seventh Objective, plan is ongoing to get the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the National Academic Board on Technical Education (NABTE) to grant GEMS the Licence to commence academic activities in our proposed Goldland University of Technovations and Sustainability (GUTS) with physical base in Atakumosa West Local Government Area of Osun State. The name of the University is already registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission and the Academic Brief and other necessary documentations are in preparation. With our vast yet to be developed 5000 hectare (7,500 acres) every student would be groomed in the art of food production, processing and packaging and managing of resources down the value chain with minimal impact on the environment. Our andragogic approach would be an interesting experimentation which positive outcomes the NUC and other African Academic Regulatory Bodies may adopt once we show evidence of success. Our emphasis for Faculty would be more of Patents and Copyrights/Trademarks than research publications. There is also plan in GUTS to promote Afrophone as primary medium of communication and instructions and English, Dutch, Mandarin and French Languages as Secondary medium of communication. With two hours (one hour early in the morning and another hour in the evening) daily as agro-physical recreation before morning and evening meals prepared by the students themselves, the students would have hands on practice in their field of studies four hours in groups in shifts and then would come for Tutorials on lectures received in Audio/Video and PDF, PPT formats after field or laboratory/Workshop routine daily.

As an Administrator in the University and a former Trade Union Leader, most Universities struggle with Funding and thus rely on exorbitant School fees to serve as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) most of which goes into paying staff salaries, especially of support staff to faculty members which in our academic system are often 3 – 4 times the faculty staff strength! GUTS approach here is to use the students as support staff for cleaning of their lecture rooms and Halls, assisting in the Laboratories/Workshops as Attendants, etc as a means of ‘paying’ for their tuition, accommodation, feeding and skills acquisition!

It is our believe that this andragogic approach to provision of qualitative, skills acquiring higher education that encourages creativity and brings relief to both students and their parents in one hand, and keeps them from social distractions and vices would hasten the development of African countries into a self-reliant Continent. With emphasis on Sustainable production processes and sustainable consumption/management of resources there will be a paradigm shift from the present narratives of unemployment or even production of unemployable, unskilled graduates to a fresh group of youths prepared to return to their countries to build their industrial hubs and contribute to their nation’s development instead of relocating to developed nations that also have their own challenges!

With global focus on Circular Economy, Africa should and need to make concerted efforts to come out of being a Consumer Continent, adopt technologies that reduce global warming. Let produce and minerals extracted and taken out of Africa be processed at the community and country of exports into finished goods using technologies that minimizes impact and the vast cheap workforce of African youths that is highest in the world!

Africa has a Standards Body, the Eco Mark Africa, essentially for agro-allied products that are to cross borders in Africa and to Europe and other parts of the World, there should also be, as a matter of urgency, an African Patents and Trademark Office set up to register Innovations developed in Africa that foreign Trademark Offices would not agree to register to prevent competition with other foreign inventors! This may be a body of all Patent and Trademark Offices of the countries with such facilities to validate an invention. Funding for commercialization of such inventions could then come from a position approved as conditions for the development of Africa through the Africa Development Bank.

• Thank you for your interest in GEMS Group. We look forward to working with you to create a better future for all.

Engr-Prof Ife Adewumi, PhD, MNSE, REngr, REHS
President, GEMS Group.