Making Agribusiness Work

Building trust in agribusiness relationships for sustainable growth

 

Making Agribusiness Work provides participants with practical competencies necessary to build trust in agribusiness relationships for sustainable growth.

There are two editions currently open for enrollment:

  • Making Agribusiness Work: Annual Learning Trajectory
  • Making Agribusiness Work: 3 Month Program

Are you in a leadership position? All of iCRA’s Making Agribusiness Work courses can be topped up with our Making Leadership Work masterclass designed to boost your leadership skills.

Course Information

Making Agribusiness Work:

Annual Learning Trajectory

Do you want to be an agribusiness coach who creates market value, builds trustworthy business relationships and generates a stable income?

This 9 month blended course consists of 1 week intensive face-2-face training in Ghana and weekly online interactive sessions. You will gain practical skills and the mindset to thrive as an agribusiness coach and facilitator.

Through live sessions, practical individual and group assignments, personal mentorship and individual feedback from our trainers, you will learn how to best:

  •  Establish and manage sustainable business relationships among farmers, agri-entrepreneurs, input/service providers by building trust and pursuing common interests.
  • Create market value in the supply chain you operate in.
  • Use and improve your negotiation skills for better contracts and business deals.
  • Secure a stable flow of income for your support services.
  • Manage group dynamics, prevent and resolve possible conflicts among stakeholders.

This course is for those working in an agri-sector business context who want to contribute to local entrepreneurial development and food security, are ambitious and want create impact.

 

Practical Details

Registration is open. NUFFIC MSP scholarships are only available for the 3-month edition of this course.

Course Duration: October 2024 – May 2025

Face-to-face training: Ghana, February 2024

Tuition Fee = €‎ 6497 excl. accommodation and travel costs

*VAT will be charged additionally in so far as applicable

‘Making Agribusiness Work’ has given me better exposure,

skills and experience that are yielding better results at work.”

– Oluwatoyin Zaka, Making Agribusiness Work: Facilitation and Coaching Alumni 2023

Making Agribusiness Work:

3 Month Program

Running a business in the agri-food sector is not easy. You need to innovate to mitigate climate related water and production problems. You see opportunities to expand your market but sourcing good quality raw materials is often difficult. Overcoming these challenges and being a successful agri-food entrepreneur requires collaboration with partners you can trust and rely on.    

Do you recognise these challenges? Are you advising agri-food actors on overcoming these challenges and contributing to food security and sustainable economic development in your region? iCRA’s 3 month blended learning program ‘Making Agribusiness Work’ can provide the support you need. You will gain tools and skills to facilitate agribusiness partnerships. You will learn to build trust between farmers, their buyers, and other stakeholders in the local food system including agro-input dealers, transporters, banks and government agencies.    

This course will equip you with the perfect mix of tools, skills and mindset to: 

  • Build long-term alliances
  • Facilitate collaboration along whole value chains
  • Foster profitable agribusiness deals and unlock real win-win situations!

This3-month part-time coursealternates blocks of online learning weeks with self-practice weeks at a sustainable pace. Each month you gain concrete skills to immediately apply in your work. It is topped off with a 1 week face-2-face module in the Netherlands including workshops, field visits, networking, and more. 

This course is for professionals working in the agri, food and water sector who want to contribute to local entrepreneurial development and food security. It is only for highly committed people that want to create impact and are willing to invest 6-8 hours per week over the whole duration of this course.  

Practical Details

Registration is open and NUFFIC MSP scholarships are available for this course. Alternatively, you can follow our 9-month Annual Learning Trajectory without scholarship.

Course Duration: October 2024 – February 2025 (with a holiday break in the middle)

Face-to-face training: Netherlands

Tuition fee = €4797

*Tuition fee, travel and accomodation may be covered by a successful NUFFIC MSP Scholarship application. 

Preliminary Course Outline

Block 1 – Becoming competitive through collaboration (online)  

Small and medium agri-food enterprises often work in an independent and ad-hoc way, and with a short-term perspective, especially in in low-trust contexts. It is not easy to convince businesses along the value chain to recognise their interdependence and see the benefits of jointly pursuing opportunities and solve problems. Their willingness to invest time, money and energy in longer-term collaborations depends largely on their perspective on (additional) market opportunities and the involved risks and overall viability of such collaboration. 

You will learn to assess agribusiness ideas and explore the added value of collaboration in Agribusiness Clusters and Partnerships.  

Block 2 – Building business relationships (online) 

Even when joint innovation and collaboration in an agribusiness network or cluster seems promising, getting real buy-in of stakeholders for a long-term partnership is not obvious. You will learn how to involve the right stakeholders, how to build relationships among them, and help them develop their competitive strategy for cluster formation.  

Block 3 – Coaching towards vibrant Agribusiness Clusters (online) 

Local business partnerships will only become resilient and sustainable in the long run if there is real ownership by the stakeholders themselves. This does not emerge by itself, help is needed. You will learn how to support and guide the agribusiness actors in their partnership building and consolidation process. You will learn tools and coaching techniques that will allow the cluster to become vibrant and self-sustaining.  

Block 4 – Inclusive communication, handling conflicts and negotiating effectively (online and f2f) 

When you aim for inclusive business partnerships, and want for example include women and young professionals, it is far from easy to give voice to all parties. Often, a few people talk a lot, while other keep quiet. There is time pressure, people beat around the bush or there are many different opinions. It is also inevitable that at some points tensions rise and conflicts surface in a partnership. Negotiating processes can become challenging and threaten sustainability of the collaboration.  

You will learn to address (potential) conflicts and adapt your way of dealing with them to the context. You will learn inclusive group facilitation skills and guide negotiations towards win-win solutions in such way that it does not damage relationships in the long run.  

“A beautiful course that ties all the loose ends together! It was so diverse, so wide, so impactful even beyond the scope of agribusiness.”

– Rahmat Eyinfunjowow, Making Agribusiness Work: 8 Month Learning Trajectory Alumni 2023

Certification

You will receive a certificate of attendance after successfully completing the course.These courses are recognised NUFFIC course and therefore can qualify for scholarships.