The online bootcamp on building your inclusive agribusiness will take place in September 2017. 2SCALE will teach participants how partnerships and bottom-up innovations can help build a profitable and inclusive agribusiness.

2SCALE is an agribusiness incubator aiming to improve rural livelihoods and food & nutrition security in Africa by accelerating inclusive business in agri-food industries. Through public-private partnerships, smallholder farmers and local agribusiness work together on organizing access to inputs, strengthening market intelligence and bargaining power, and other interventions to make their value chains more inclusive. In this course 2SCALE will present methodologies and practical tools used to build this inclusiveness.

Target groups

• Entrepreneurs in developing countries who would like to expand or improve their business for and with low-income communities;
• Representatives of farmer organizations;
• Staff of intermediary organisations working with local entrepreneurs, such as NGOs, business development services or investors;
• Students in business related fields who would like to learn about the potential and practicalities of being inclusive business entrepreneurs.

Topics to cover

The participants in the online course will gain knowledge on the tools and methodologies used by 2SCALE, such as the CASE approach, partnership development tools and others. Practical examples from 2SCALE partnerships from the 8 different program countries will be used to illustrate how this has worked in the 2SCALE context.

The program will tackle the following topics:

1. Value Creation: learn how to access local markets and create value for and with smallholder farmers and other business actors in the value chain;
2. Innovations in Farming: learn how to strengthen your supply chains and increase returns to local farmers and SMEs by introducing innovations, based on needs assessment;
3. Access to Finance: learn how to secure access to finance in your value chains by building innovative financing solutions at farmer and SME level;
4. Agribusiness Clusters: learn how to effectively organise local farmers to ensure innovation and competitiveness, to maximize local value creation and to empower farmers.

Learning environment

These topics will be addressed in 4 interrelated modules that you can follow at your own convenience over a 4-week period.

Each module consists of videos, background reading material, and an assignment. On the module level, there is room to interact with other course participants. Experts are also active on the forum and will provide feedback on assignments.

Registration

You can register on the IB Accelerator website. You must first create an IBA account if you do not already have one.