Strengthening Agri-Entrepreneurship and Community Engagement Training in East, West and North Africa (AgriENGAGE)

Description

AgriENGAGE aims at filling a significant human capacity gap in having agricultural science graduates needed to foster transformation of the agribusiness sector to enhance global competitiveness, as targeted in the national development plans of many African economies.  The target groups of this action are Universities, University academic staff, and students, while the final beneficiaries include farmers employers, research institutions, and the governments. The needs of the target groups are as outlined below:

Region (Countries- Kenya – Egerton University and Pwani University; Uganda- Gulu University and Uganda Martyrs University and Benin – University of Abomey Calavi and National University of Agriculture): These countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa have similar needs.

Sub-Saharan Africa is faced by food and nutritional security as well as poverty with inadequate human resource capacity to formulate and implement the right agricultural policies as well as drive the agenda of commercialization of agriculture for economic development. At human resource level, there is a limited number of graduates from Universities in East, South and West and North Africa with requisite skills to drive the agenda of agricultural transformation. This is exacerbated by a growing youth population leading to a rising youth unemployment rate.

Students: Most agricultural science students are ill-prepared and ill-equipped to work with research firms, entrepreneurial farming communities and agribusinesses. Consequently, they have limited employability and participatory ability in rural and agro-enterprise transformation processes with graduate unemployment standing at 50% . This initiative intends to capacitate agricultural science students in business and community engagement skills so to enable them contribute positively towards sustainable development.

Faculty –Faculty of most African universities lack funds to participate in staff retooling which limits their exposure to changing environment requirements in agriculture and methods of curriculum delivery. Most staff rely on chalk and paper and lecture delivery methodology which is teacher centred as opposed to learner centred. The staff lack capacity and skills to efficiently deliver curricula in business and community engagement. This project is intended to benefit the staff to have better skills to deliver a more practical oriented curricula in community engagement and business management to agricultural science students.

Universities- Most Universities in Sub-Saharan Africa are struggling with increasing student numbers, limited facilities and decreased funding from the governments as most African governments can no longer afford to finance universities for their full budget needs, hence have inadequate numbers of academic staff to effectively deliver the curricula. Moreover, there are limited collaborations between African Universities and European Universities as well as limited collaboration between Sub-Saharan HEIs with the North Africa HEIs. The agricultural science curricula is mostly technical based and concentrates on either animal or crop production courses with few or no courses to cater for the needed 21st Century Skills of which business management, entrepreneurship and community engagement are key drivers of agricultural transformation and to commercialize smallholder agriculture.  AgriENGAGE will review agricultural science curricula to include some business and community engagement courses, develop modules to train staff and students in business and community engagement as well as introduce or upscale farm and industry attachment to enhance university-industry linkages.

Region: North Africa (Morocco- Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) and Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II (IAV) . The country has high  youth unemployment with many young people migrating to Europe. The agricultural jobs are not attractive enough and most youth have inadequate skills to transform the agricultural sector.

Students: Agricultural science students lack the practical skills in business and community engagement to work effectively with farmers and the agribusiness industry.

Staff- The staff are trained in learner centred pedagogical skills but have less collaborations with other HEIs staff from Sub-Saharan Africa hence AgriENGAGE will create a platform for collaboration.

Universities- Moroccan Universities have built linkages with the industry but have few linkages with HEIs in Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. AgriENGAGE will be an opportunity for UM6P and AIV to cross-learn and collaborate with HEIs from Sub-Saharan Africa.