This unique programme uses a double-pronged approach. We work in partnership with both African education institutions and smallholder producer organisations.
We match African education institutions (colleges and universities) together as peers, so that they can support and learn from each other in providing bespoke agribusiness education for the smallholder organisations in their areas. This means that we are building the capacity of in-country institutions to provide the necessary business education for farmers – as opposed to flying in ‘experts’ from the North.
We are working towards building an Africa-wide network of education institutions, NGOs and smallholder producer organisations that will work together in order to share agribusiness knowledge, skills and ideas.
Kenya and Ethiopia Peers
This network started when we secured support from Comic Relief to build on our work with our local partners: Ambo College in Ethiopia and Nyeri Technical Training Institute (NTTI) in Kenya.
The programme transfers Ambo’s knowledge and experience of working with smallholders to the NTTI, enabling the NTTI to then train their own staff to work with local smallholder producer organisations in Nyeri.
As the programme gains momentum, we will be working with more and new local partners to expand and extend the reach of the peer network first throughout Ethiopia and Kenya, and then into other East African countries and beyond. Our aim is to build a pan-African network of local organisations working towards a common purpose – to strengthen smallholder producer organisations, lifting their farmer members out of poverty.
This ‘Peer Partnering’ approach is capturing the imagination of smallholders, co-operatives, NGOs, educational institutions and governments in East Africa. It delivers real independence, opens up market access and creates sustainable local capacity in a cost-effective manner as it builds on the skills, knowledge and infrastructure already widely available in East Africa.
