What is the goal of the project?
The goal of the project is to provide high quality business, management and leadership education to African Agribusiness managers and other agricultural development stakeholders. This will strengthen not only the business, management and leadership skills of African Agribusiness managers, but will also lead to greater effectiveness of projects that integrate smallholder farmers into the Agribusiness value chain and will thus enhance the competitiveness and poverty reduction potential of the African Agribusiness sector.
Why is this project important?
Agriculture is the primary driver of most sub-Saharan economies, supporting over 70% of the population and contributing an average of 30% of GDP. Sustainable development of the agricultural sector in Africa is thus critically important to poverty alleviation, food security and economic transformation. The majority of African Agriculture is smallholder farming with about 80% of farmers farming less than two hectares (African Smallholder Farmers Group). Ensuring that public and private investment translates into improved incomes and job creation for Africa’s poor requires scaling up and strengthening smallholder farming to enable the poor’s access and participation in agricultural value chains. This in turn requires good business, management and leadership skills among all key agricultural stakeholders across the agricultural value chain, which is where the critical gap exists in Agribusiness education in Africa.
To successfully harness the agribusiness sector as a driver of poverty reduction in Africa, agricultural training and education programs must combine technical expertise with business, management and leadership core competencies – understanding the particular situation and needs of smallholder farmers, the agribusiness value chain and where/how to integrate smallholder farmers, managing complex teams, partnership development and negotiation skills, risk management, financial management and resource mobilisation – to bridge knowledge gaps and enable the creation and management of successful Agri-enterprises.
What are the project activities?
The proposed AABS Agribusiness project will enable a core group of African business schools to fill the identified business, management and leadership education gaps by developing, testing and deploying high impact business and management education courses for the African agribusiness sector. The focus of the project is to enable a shift of mindset from a purely farm-based production view of agriculture to a business and management perspective of agriculture, grounded in a comprehensive and holistic understanding of agricultural value chains. Through a variety of innovative and experiential activities, the project will develop and strengthen the business, management and leadership capacities of the participants. Ongoing support and coaching will be provided to participants through a variety of wrap around services that will facilitate the application and continual improvement of skills in the workplace.
Who will the project reach?
A broad group of agribusiness stakeholders with representatives of varying components of the value chain in the classroom. Successful agricultural development requires collaboration among multiple stakeholders, and successful pedagogical approaches at the executive level focus on interaction in the classroom and a learning by doing approach with appropriate time for debriefing. Thus the programs will move to an integrative approach to promote learning and interaction amongst cross-functional groups.
