unibrain1

UniBRAIN is an initiative of the

Africa Commission, which is

supported by Danida

UniBRAIN

Brief No.1: Realising the potential of Africa’s youth by linking university education, research and

business in sustainable agriculture

UniBRAIN will realise the potential for investment in African agribusiness by breaking barriers and fostering collaboration between universities, business and research to create cultures and environment that will value, encourage and enable innovation and produce graduates who are problem solvers, decision takers and successful entrepreneurs.

What is UniBRAIN?

UniBRAIN is an initiative for advancing agribusiness incubation and improved agribusiness education in Africa. It is supported by Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Danida), and facilitated by a team of seven partner institutions. One of these is the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), which hosts the UniBRAIN coordination unit at its Secretariat in Accra, Ghana.

The other partners are three African sub-regional organisations (SROs):

Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA)

Conseil Ouest et Centre Africain pour la Recherche et le Développement Agricoles / West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD)

Centre for Coordinating Agricultural Research and Development in Southern Africa (CCARDESA)

And three other pan African and international organisations:

African Network for Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE)

Pan African Agribusiness and Agro Industry Consortium (PanAAC) Agri-Business Incubator of the International Crops Research Institute for the

Semi-Arid Tropics (ABI-ICRISAT)

UniBRAIN supports 6 pilot agribusiness innovation incubator consortia (AIIC), which work in critical African agricultural value chains.

The Consortium for Enhancing University Responsiveness to Agribusiness

Development (UniBRAIN-CURAD) focuses on plantation cash crops. Specific value chain: coffee

Afri Banana Products Limited (UniBRAIN-ABP Ltd) focuses on staple food and cash crops.

Specific value chain: banana

The Sorghum Value Chain Development Consortium (UniBRAIN-SVCDC) focuses on smallholder dry land food grains.

Specific value chain: sorghum

The Creating Competitive Livestock Entrepreneurs in Agribusiness (UniBRAIN-CCLEAr) focuses on smallholder livestock.

Specific value chain: livestock

The West African Agribusiness Resource Incubator (UniBRAIN-WAARI) focuses on agro-forestry products.

Specific value chains: non-timber forestry products, cereals and fruits

The Agribusiness Incubation Trust (UniBRAIN-AgBIT) focuses on tropical fruit. Specific value chain: tropical fruit and vegetables

What is the Africa Commission?

The Africa Commission, which was launched by the Prime Minister of Denmark in 2008, convened a series of intensive consultations on a new agenda for international development cooperation. The

conclusion:

African universities are not sufficiently geared to meet the needs of industry. Graduates often cannot find employment, while many small businesses lack staff with the education and skills needed to drive innovation. Essentially, the relationship between the demands of the private sector and what universities teach is too weak. However, studies show that when university graduates do business, they create more jobs than those without a university education. Nowhere are these deficiencies more critical than in agriculture, Africa’s dominant industry. The UniBRAIN initiative was created to realise the huge potential for synergy between university education, research and private sector development in the pursuit of sustainable agriculture and agribusiness. It was designed to catalyse and advance African agricultural innovation by bringing these three parties

together in joint agribusiness innovation incubation consortia (AIICs).

The Africa Commission believes that African universities need to be engaged

with private enterprise at all levels, including smallholders and firms in local

and distant markets. By linking across agricultural value chains — locally,

nationally and regionally — universities will be better able to educate

entrepreneurs who can tap the enormous under-exploited potential of African

agriculture for growth, job creation and poverty reduction.

What are UniBRAIN’s objectives?

Our objectives will be realised through 3 outputs.

Output 1: Commercialisation of agribusiness innovations supported and promoted.

Output 2: Agribusiness graduates with the potential to become efficient entrepreneurs produced by tertiary educational institutions.

Output 3: UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and

up-scaled.

Our development objective: To contribute to enabling African countries to create jobs and raise incomes through sustainable agribusiness development.

Our immediate objective: To enable universities, business and agricultural research institutions to commercialise agricultural technologies and produce graduates with entrepreneurial and business skills through

agribusiness incubator partnerships.

These three outputs will be achieved through the six consortia with the help of UniBRAIN grants and technical support. UniBRAIN promotes networking through which the incubators will benefit from each other’s experiences. In addition to sharing lessons and best practices, great scope exists for accelerating the spread of commercially viable agricultural technologies across the continent and globally.

Resources and services of UniBRAIN agribusiness

innovation incubators

Access to the human and infrastructural resources of the consortium

Sharing, dissemination and up-scaling of innovation and research outputs

Agro-technology development and transfer Facilitation of social and venture capital Technology packaging Investor start-up linkages Technical consultancy on customer,

product and business model development

Mentoring Modular training programs Market research and market

development Access to the incubator’s brand

assurance of quality Access to relevant agricultural

research outputs Contribution to improvement of

tertiary agribusiness curricula and training

Support for soft landings Opportunities to join value-adding

networks

UniBRAIN provides opportunities for partners to showcase their expertise and ingenuity at trade fairs and exhibitions.

Above: displaying innovative food products.

Left: demonstrating how an irrigation system can be operated with a mobile phone.

Establishing agribusiness incubators is a complex and demanding task. While the tripartite university-business-research approach is a source of strength, it inevitably adds additional layers of complexity. Fortunately, UniBRAIN can benefit from the capacities of FARA and the SROs in research, ANAFE in tertiary education, PanACC in agribusiness, and the experience already gained by ICRISAT-ABI as well as the World Bank’s commitment to business incubation in Africa through infoDev. UniBRAIN will provide grants to enable the agribusiness incubators to establish themselves and provide services to start-ups, SMEs, and innovative firms and agribusiness faculties. This will provide access to the human, infrastructural and financial assets of the university, business and research consortia which own the incubators.

If farmers are the backbone of African agriculture, the agribusinesses are the legs that support it.

UniBRAIN Contacts

UniBRAIN Facility Coordinator Mr Ralph von Kaufmann Roaming tel: +254 733 634 508 [email protected] www.fara-africa.org/our-projects/unibrain

FARA Prof Monty Jones, Executive Director [email protected] Dr Irene Annor-Frempong, Director, Capacity Strengthening [email protected] www.fara-africa.org ANAFE Dr Aissétou Dramé Yayé Executive Secretary [email protected] www.anafeafrica.org PanAAC Mrs Lucy Muchoki, Chief Executive Officer [email protected], [email protected] www.panaac.org

AIP at ICRISAT Dr Kiran Sharma

Chief Executive Officer [email protected],

www.abiicrisat.org

ASARECA Dr Joseph Methu

[email protected] www.asareca.org

CORAF/WECARD

Dr Sidi Sanyang [email protected]

www.coraf.org

CCARDESA

Dr Keoagile Molapong [email protected]

www.sadc.int/fanr