Growing agribusiness entrepreneurs in East Africa

Enhanced on-line Training Course

From July to September 2020 the Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness course was organised as completely virtual course working with entrepreneurs through the GoGettaz Generation Africa Agripreneur Prize 2020.  Over 300 participants actively followed the course from over 32 African countries.   To enhance engagement and exchange, weekly webinars were held, and a WhatsApp group created which proved to be extremely dynamic. The course closed at the end September and close to 80 business plans were submitted.  They are currently being reviewed by experts and individual feedback will be given to each participant or team.  It was a strong learning experience for us to organise the course virtually and yet provide individual support to the participants across all these countries.  With this support the completion rate was five times higher than the average for an on-line course!

Blended learning Training

The new cohorts are starting in our partner Universities in the coming weeks.  In mid-November we are organising a virtual Training of Trainer session with several new Universities in Uganda and Kenya and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (a new country for our activities),

Study on Agribusiness Incubation in Sub-Saharan Africa

The FAO and the African Union commissioned the Agripreneurship Alliance to conduct a comprehensive Study on Agribusiness Incubation. Before the lock-down, trips were made to South Africa, Ethiopia, Cote d’Ivoire, and Nigeria to do 'deep dives' on incubators in those countries. From the desk research over 450 organisations were investigate and over 300 mapped for inclusion in a Directory - the first of its kind. As physical workshops are not possible,  the African Union and the FAO decided to organise a series of webinars  3 sub-regional webinars covered Southern, East, West & Central Africa and included  a total of over 600 participants and 20 panellists.  The final webinar is on November 5 and will be cross-regional.  The panel includes the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and other key organisations.  The aim of these webinars is to share the findings thus far and get feedback and validation from stakeholders. The webinars also aim to draft the way forward for a proposed programme to build the network and strengthen the agribusiness incubation and acceleration across the different regions in in Africa. The FAO is very pleased with the work so far and has asked us to extend the Study to North Africa in 2021.