New collaboration with AAIN to grow agri-business in Africa

New collaboration with AAIN to grow agri-business in Africa

This week, African Agribusiness Incubation Network (AAIN) Chief Executive Officer Dr. Alex Ariho, and Human and Institutional, Capacity Development Officer Dr. James Aucha, visited CIAT in Nairobi to sign a Memorandum of Understanding and discuss collaboration between the two organizations.

CIAT and AAIN sign MOU at CIAT”s offices in Nairobi and discussed future collaboration.

Headquartered in Accra, Ghana, AAIN –  operational in 54 African countries – is a private sector entity focusing on incubating agri-business through advancing entrepreneurial talent, networking, integrating science and technology for job and wealth creation in Africa.

AAIN is anchored within the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and designed to support target countries achieve their national priorities in agriculture..

The MOU opens the way for collaboration between AAIN and CIAT in joint initiatives aimed at supporting smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs to transform from subsistence to competitive businesses through mentoring and capacity strengthening. It also opens the way for joint resource mobilization, information sharing and event organization in the area of agribusiness.

Some immediate opportunities under this collaboration include:

  • Partnership on the Africa Agribusiness Incubation Program that targets 20 countries and seeks to establish 100 incubators and create jobs for the youth. This program has been endorsed by the Africa Union and is set to be presented at the up-coming G20 meeting in July 2017.
  • Collaboration on the Kenya agribusiness and youth empowerment initiative being discussed with the World Bank and which aims to benefit 47 counties.
  • Development of a concept on ‘Technology Supermarkets’, an idea that was presented by AAIN at the World Food Forum in March 2017 and which attracted interest from various funding partners. In this, CIAT could play a key role in availing, testing and scaling up research and innovations in future, and potential incubators from our current work on beans and forages could benefit.
  • Participation at The Africa Agribusiness Incubation Conference and Expo 2017 from 4th to 6th October 2017 in Dakar, Senegal, an opportunity which the CIAT team in Africa will be taking forward in due course.

CIAT was represented at the discussions by Boaz Waswa, Solomon Mwendia, Uwe Ohmstedt and Anne Ruhiu. For more information contact: [email protected]