By Anne Roulin | President
Winners of the Business Startup Awards
When the Agripreneurship Alliance, with its partners, runs the Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness course, we finish by carefully reviewing all of the completed business plans and selecting one business from each class to be awarded with a US$1,000 business startup award. During Cohort 5 we received 36 Business Plans, and we are delighted that the following businesses have been awarded with Business Startup Awards.
Congratulations to the prize winners and our best wishes go to everyone who completed the Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness course and submitted a business plan. You all have the opportunity to create amazing food-based businesses that will change the lives of your communities. We also want to take this opportunity to thank all of our Trainers in DRC, Kenya, Namibia, Somaliland and Uganda who facilitated the Cohort 5 course. Their dedication and commitment to create environments where entrepreneurs can flourish, and the support they provide to individual entrepreneurs is truly inspirational. They have our sincere thanks and deepest admiration.
Consulting work on the Agribusiness Incubation and Acceleration Landscape in Africa
In early 2020 the Agripreneurship Alliance was commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to undertake research on the Agribusiness Incubation & Acceleration landscape across sub-Saharan Africa. The African Union Commission (AUC) requested that the study be expanded to include North Africa, so that the entire African continent was included. This included analysing over 600 organisations across Africa and doing deep dives on sixteen organisations with particularly interesting business models. Once the continental draft was completed a series of five regional seminars, hosted via Zoom, were conducted to inform, and validate the study with a total of over 1000 participants. The report was launched on 24 April 2024 by the FAO.
The overall conclusion from the study is that agribusiness incubators and accelerators are already playing an important role in supporting enterprise development and growth-oriented businesses. However, given that agribusiness incubation and acceleration is still a relatively recent development in Africa, there is very limited knowledge among policymakers and practitioners alike on the establishment, sustainable operation, and impact of these incubators. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has required a rethinking of how agribusiness incubators operate and how they can provide effective support through information and communication technologies (ICTs) and digitalization.
The findings and recommendations presented in the report aim at providing practical guidance to policy makers, practitioners and development partners seeking to maximize the impact of publicly funded agribusiness incubation programmes. The recommendations from the study have underpinned the development of a proposal for a programme to capacitate agribusiness incubators in Africa and enable them to provide effective support to SMEs to grow their businesses and contribute to inclusive economic growth, job creation and food security. The study and ensuing proposal also contribute to key FAO strategic objectives and programmes on the continent, as well as the AU CAADP-Malabo Declaration Business Plan Priority intervention areas
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