From Dialogue to Delivery: Gapuma Applauds ASIS 2026’s Drive for Local Content across Africa
28 July 2026 The fifth edition of the Africa Social Impact Summit (ASIS 2026) has once again shown what is possible when purpose meets partnership. Co-convened by Sterling One Foundation, the United Nations in Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, and the Lagos State Government, the summit brought together over 2,000 leaders, investors, policymakers and changemakers in Lagos under the theme “Financing for Development: Building Resilience and Transforming Emerging Economies.” At Gapuma Group, we welcome ASIS 2026’s renewed commitments from partners including UNFPA, Seplat Energy, IHS Towers and The Coca-Cola Company, and the summit’s clear message that Africa’s development will be built through collaboration and local ownership, not isolated effort. It is a message that sits close to home. Through GLB, our Nigerian business, and across our chemicals and commodities operations and distribution networks in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa, Gapuma has long championed local content as the foundation of sustainable growth. For us, that means local teams, local partnerships and local capacity built to last, whether we are supplying industry in Lagos or building presence elsewhere on the continent. ASIS 2026’s shift from dialogue to delivery reflects exactly the approach we take to our own markets: real investment, real presence and real accountability to the communities in which we operate. Africa’s growth will not be financed from the outside looking in. It will be built by businesses and institutions rooted in the continent, working together towards common goals. We congratulate Sterling One Foundation, the United Nations in Nigeria and all this year’s co-convenors and partners on a summit that has once again turned ambition into action. Gapuma remains committed to playing its part, one market, one partnership and one community at a time.
Ghana: Where it all began, and where we headed next
There are companies that arrive in a market, and there are companies that were born in one. For Gapuma Group, Ghana is the latter. When our founder, Jack Bardakjian, started the business in 1999, the very first trade was in Ghana – a decision he took, in his own words, “against all the advice and all the predictions.” Twenty-six years on, that instinct has become the foundation of everything we are: an international commodities group sourcing from more than thirty countries and delivering to over fifty, with an active in-country presence in West Africa that traces directly back to where we began. So when Ash Unadkat, our Office and Quality Manager, made his first overseas trip on behalf of the company this month – accompanied by our Procurement Consultant, Raj Thakkar – it was no accident that the destination was Accra. You return to your roots when you want to grow. The timing could hardly be richer. Ghana stands at a genuinely interesting moment. The 24-hour economy initiative, the Accra–Kumasi Expressway, and continued development across the gold, oil, energy, cocoa, and financial sectors are reshaping the commercial landscape – the same sectors that have anchored the bilateral relationship between Ghana and the United Kingdom for generations. That relationship runs deep. Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African nation to win independence from colonial rule, in March 1957 – a milestone that made it a trailblazer for a continent. The bonds forged since, in language, trade, the Commonwealth, and a vast and vibrant diaspora, remain among the closest the UK holds anywhere in Africa. Our London-based Ghanaian colleague, Yannick Annor, captured that spirit beautifully after meeting the President of the Republic of Ghana in London on 31 May. He wrote of a diaspora encouraged to return, invest, and bring their knowledge home – and of his own reasons, as a French-Ghanaian, for choosing the UK precisely because it kept him close to Ghana. “We all have a role to play in shaping the future of our country,” he said. We could not agree more, and we are proud to play our small part. And then there is the football. In exactly twenty days, on 23 June, the Black Stars meet England at Gillette Stadium in their first-ever competitive fixture between the two nations. Whatever the scoreline, there is something fitting about it: two countries bound by history, meeting on the world’s biggest stage, just as one of them welcomes us back to where our story started. From a single trade in 1999 to a quarter-century of partnership – Ghana, it has always been you. 🇬🇭