Growing agribusiness entrepreneurs in East Africa

Exciting times for the Agripreneurship Alliance! Following our registration as an official international NGO in Uganda and the opening of an office at the CURAD incubator in Kampala, we have hired two staff members who started on September 1^st.

John is our new Programme Manager, and this is what he had to say about his appointment. “I am thrilled and eager to support the mission of the Agripreneurship Alliance, developing the next generation of African Agripreneurs. We must unleash young people’s creativity and potential if we are to address challenges such as youth migration, food insecurity and climate change”.

Sheila is our new Administration Officer, in her words “Work isn’t fun until you meet your dream team and I believe I have found mine and I have great confidence that together we shall build something amazing for young African agrifood entrepreneurs”.

John and Sheila bring a wealth of experience in entrepreneurship, the financial sector, agricultural research as well as in NGOs and we are delighted to have them “on board”. Steven spent most of September in Uganda for their induction and together they met most of our Ugandan partners. It will be a fast ramp-up as Steven, John and Sheila will be delivering together a Business Readiness Training of Trainers course in Zambia at the end of October for five universities from Zambia and Kenya. This is in collaboration with the Häme University of Applied Sciences in Finland and PBL-BioAfrica.

The fourth cohort of the Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness training is drawing to a close and so far, 43 business plans have been submitted for review, with a few more still being finalised. Some very interesting business ideas – such as Amaranthus value addition, mulberry teas and juices, and natural liquid fertilisers. We are particularly pleased to see the progress of the Official University of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo who facilitated two groups this year and submitted several well-written business plans that can certainly lead to successful enterprises.

• Sheila_and_John__Agripreneurship_Alliance.pdf (PDF)
  

After a lot of paperwork, the Agripreneurship Alliance is now registered as an official international NGO in Uganda. We have also signed a Partnership Agreement with the CURAD Agribusiness Incubator on the outskirts of Kampala “to work together in line with the objectives of CURAD, which aims to support innovative local entrepreneurs and start-up companies operating in the agricultural sector through public-private collaborations and incubation programs”. CURAD has been awarded  the prize for the Best Agribusiness Incubator in Africa several times. We will be setting up an office at the most recent CURAD facility that includes pilot processing equipment for horticultural products that is available for agripreneurs to use for development and early-stage production. In June we are in Kampala to interview for 2 Ugandan staff members.

The 2021-2022 cohort of students following the Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness training is drawing to a close. Eight Universities are participating from Uganda, Kenya, Somaliland, and DR Congo with 221 students registered - 90 Female & 131 Male (41%/59%). We are delighted that for the first time we have one cohort with more female participants than male – this is at the Ugandan Christian University. The business plans are coming in and are being reviewed by our expert team in Switzerland and the USA.  See some testimonies from previous students  Charlotte and Hugues  in the link below. 

The trip to Uganda in June gave the opportunity to meet in person some of the young agripreneurs who have followed our training - which was great! One of them Steven B. has a wine business using local fruit including pineapples, bananas, and mango. Steven’s dream is to start making wine from grapes so we brought him some vine cuttings from Switzerland and will be following closely if they can adapt to the Ugandan climatic conditions. Steven was at the first National Agriculture Education Exhibition in Jinja this month (see photo above) and had the opportunity to share his passion for agriprocessing with many groups of school children. The theme of the Exhibition was Farming for a Prosperous Future. He commented on the change in mindset at exhibitions, from just wanting to taste products, to a desire to be trained in agriculture and agriprocessing. So, there are good signs for the future!

Links:

• Young agripreneurs provided with knowledge and opportunities

In early November the opportunity of a brief window in the COVID-19 pandemic was seized to organise an in-person Training of Trainer event in Uganda. This course provided the opportunity for universities who had not previously participated in face-to-face training as well as new trainers. Thus, Jaramogi Odinga Oginga University of Science & Technology (JOOUST Kenya), the University of Bukavu (UOB DRC), Uganda Christian University (UCU Kenya) and University of Namibia (UNAM) were offered two places each and from Uganda: Gulu, MUBS, BSU, Laikipia in Kenya and ISTUS in Somaliland one place each. This was a significant investment for the Agripreneurship Alliance with total cost being approximately US$25,000 for the 13 participants and the 3 Trainers. We were delighted to welcome the new partners, UCU & UNAM, to the Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness family. The week was very successful and proved to be a powerful learning experience. The programme focused on introducing the course, exploring the potential to reinforce the social and environmental impact, which was particularly pertinent as this was run in parallel to COP26. Specific training elements included an ideation session delivered by an expert in design and creativity, a lengthy focus on the online platform supported by the African Management Institute and an in-depth consideration of the finance tool. Importantly the week was designed with a very interactive programme, with much engagement, activities, and exercises. This provided the opportunity to embed an experiential learning methodology across the participants and enabling the development of a strong personal and professional network. The week finished with each participant facilitating a short session from the course with the others role playing as students. This was followed by in-depth reflection and review and the opportunity to analyse two business plans to allow an understanding of the opportunities and challenges of the business plans and how they can be strengthened and improved. It was gratifying to find that participants gave the week a rating of 4.7 out of a total five – the main comment being that it should be extended to 2 weeks!

We are in the final stages of the registration of the Agripreneurship Alliance as an official international NGO in Uganda. Once the final approval is obtained, we will open an Agripreneurship Alliance office in the facilities of the CURAD Agribusiness Incubator on the outskirts of Kampala.

In early December we organised a part physical, part virtual, Side Event at the RUFORUM triennial conference in Benin (the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building is a consortium of 143 African universities from 38 countries across the African continent). The side event was entitles ‘’Evaluating the impact of the ‘Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness Training’ and included presentations from our partner universities as well as the University of Abomey-Calvi in Benin and the University of the Free State in South Africa. Other speakers included a Venture Capitalist speaking on the need for Governments to develop policies and regulatory frameworks that create enabling environments. Two young entrepreneurs from Uganda spoke about their own journeys, developing and growing SME businesses within the value addition (hygiene products) and coffee sectors. The event was summed up pertinently by the event chair, Dr. Basil Mugonola (Gulu). He raised three key areas that the university and wider sectors, need to consider when promoting entrepreneurship in general and supporting young African agri-entrepreneurs in particular:

1. The vital need for partnerships on a south-south and a south-north basis. These promote knowledge, increase capacity, enable resourcing of initiatives, and assist in the creation of entrepreneurial eco-systems within and across the African food system.
2. The importance for entrepreneurs, and others, to ‘Act local and think global’. This is crucial, entrepreneurs should be aware of the challenges that face the communities of which they are a part, food insecurity, changing climate, gender inequality and poverty, seek to create businesses that create a good future for themselves, but also support their communities as an integral part of their business model, while at the same time, seeing the connections and potential for their businesses on a much larger scale.
3. Connectivity is key, relationships should be developed and enhanced to move away from ‘silo thinking’ and to capture the potential in developing multi-disciplinary approaches, bringing strengths from different sectors to create the answers needed to address fundamental issues.

Blended learning Training – Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness

The cohorts of students in the 6 Universities in Uganda, Kenya and Somaliland all completed the 2020-2021 Training and submitted a total of 35 business plans. There were some particularly interesting projects this time including a silk farm in Kenya.  The University of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo was a new University, and the training is still underway.  We are particularly pleased with the results of these cohorts given all the challenges that trainers had during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The Universities were partially or fully closed, and many students went back to their home villages where internet connectivity is frequently very poor.

In November we are delighted to able to travel to Africa again and will be conducting a week-long Training of Trainers workshop in Uganda.  This will be for new Trainers from our current Universities, and we are very pleased that two new Universities are joining - the University of Namibia and the Ugandan Christian University. We will have a particular focus on ideation this time and Angela - an experienced designer and creator from Creaholic in Switzerland - will be coming to teach this part of the programme. This trip will also allow us to meet many of our partners and friends that we have only seen via Zoom over the past 2 years!

Over the past weeks we have been working with a specialised legal firm in Uganda to register the Agripreneurship Alliance as an official international NGO in Uganda. A lot of documents are required but the process is well under way, and we hope to open an Agripreneurship Alliance office in 2022.

On-line Business Readiness Training for South Africa smallholder farmers

We have just completed an exciting new on-line training programme with over 200 smallholder cattle and poultry farmers in South Africa - 75% of whom had never followed a webinar before.  It was a Business Readiness training aimed to sensitise these emerging farmers to agriculture as a BUSINESS and support their journey to become commercial scale farmers, complementing the agri-training they receive from the Sernick Group. Many of them are intending to diversify their farm activities to have more regular cash flow and facilitate investments for expansion.  During the 10-week course, there was high engagement during the weekly webinars and the WhatsApp group which also encouraged a lot of peer-to-peer exchange.  Video testimonies from some of the participants are available via the link below.  This type of on-line training with farmers in remote areas would have been extremely difficult pre-COVID-19. The leap forward in connectivity has opened significant new opportunities. The participants were still plagued with unstable internet and regular power cuts, but the Zoom recordings allowed everyone to follow the course if they missed a session.  The success of this training indicates that it is a model that can be implemented in other African countries.

Blended learning Training – Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness

The blended learning training Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness in the Universities in Uganda, Kenya and Somaliland is progressing with the 3rd cohorts of students.  It has been slowed down by the partial, or full closing, of the Universities. However, the Trainers have forged on - teaching the course in person when possible and continuing on-line as required. There are over 150 students following the programme currently and we are expecting the first business plans to arrive soon. We are also delighted that one of our Trainers from Somaliland has won a scholarship to study for a Ph.D. in the University of Florida.

Impact Study

With almost 4 years of experience and having trained over 700 young people, we are conducting a detailed study on the impact of the Agribusiness training and will present the results at a conference in Benin in December. The analysis will include the effect on the Universities and their teaching methods, the impact on the Trainers and their personal development, and of course the impact on the students in terms of the number of businesses created - the results they have achieved and the opportunities that have opened for them.

Study on Agribusiness Incubation across Africa

The Study that we have been conducting for the UN-Food & Agriculture Organisation and the Africa Union is now completed and is under review. We analysed over 400 Entrepreneur Support Organisations across Africa to evaluate the strengths, limitations, and opportunities. Concrete actions have been formulated across 10 areas that include: Enhancing networking, communication, and co-operation across the sector, Capturing & sharing best practices; Building a Benchmarking framework to measure impact; Specific areas of capacity building; Strengthening Agribusiness Programmes focused on women; Expanding Agri-processing to capture more value; Agri-tech; Improving Food Safety & quality and Capturing the opportunities of the newly implemented African Continental Free Trade Area.

The African Union has decided to release the Report in September for the Constitution of African Ministers meeting in October for adoption and implementation of the recommendations. We are also contributing to a working group with the FAO and the African Union to build a pan-African programme to further support agribusiness SMEs (Small & Medium Enterprises).

Link to testimonies:  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nVgOcjT-cdO1Y6FnYBEMs_CDL-iyiq-j/view