The Chief of Staff (CoS) to the Osun State Governor, Dr. Charles ‘Diji Akinola, has received the 2022 Cocoa Lifetime Achievement Award.
The presentation of the award was made recently at the 2022 edition of the Nigerian Cocoa Awards held on Victoria Island, Lagos.
According to the organisers of the award, the Eti-Oni Development Group, Dr. Akinola was honoured on account of his tremendous personal contributions to the development of the cocoa industry in Nigeria.
“This award has been given in recognition of Dr. Akinola’s work over the last 27 years in the area of cocoa development during his time as the Country Director of Technoserve between 1993 and 1998, Founder/CEO of Entreprise for Development International (EfDI) between 1999 and 2008, Nigerian National Coordinator of the Sustainable Tree Crop Programme (STCP) – an innovative multi-agency, public-private sector effort involving the USAID and the chocolate industry in facilitating the improvement of smallholder agricultural systems focusing on cocoa and cashew in West Africa between 2001 and 2005.”