On 18th July 2019, the IFC and Switzerland launched the first EDGE students’ competition on green building under the EDGE green buildings program. The EDGE program teamed up with an architectural firm in Accra, Orthner Orthner and Associates and the Central University to run the competition for architecture students. The focus of the competition is to introduce the concept of green buildings to students at a very early stage, so it becomes a part of their professional life after they have left school. 20 students have been pre-selected who will then use the EDGE software to come up with their unique designs that meeting the EDGE standards.
In her remarks, Ms. Fatma Diop Wane, the acting country manager of IFC, reiterated the IFC’s commitment to the climate change agenda and that the EDGE is one of the instrument it is using to achieve that objective. She highlighted that the IFC’s green building portfolio hit 2 billion dollars mark through investments and would continue to use their advisory services to identify new opportunities.
Mr. Matthias Feldmann, the chargé d’affaires a.i.of the Embassy of Switzerland in Ghana, Togo and Benin charged the students participating in the competition to be daring and inspiring as they come up with designs that are not only innovative but disruptive. He highlighted the huge positive economic, environmental and social impacts of green building standards. More specifically he noted that “green building standards, such as the EDGE standard, can play an important role in greening the economy and in ensuring greater resource efficiency and environmental sustainability of new buildings”
