Making Agribusiness Work

Who is this course designed for?

Making Agribusiness Work is for professionals aspiring to contribute to local economic development and food security. Whether you are an agribusiness coach, advisor, or agri-food professional iCRA designed this course for you. You must be willing to invest 6-8 hours per week. This program will enable you to create market value, generate a stable income, and establish trustworthy business relationships.

What’s included in this course?

When your course begins, you will be invited our online learning environment ‘Learningstone’. You will also join a Whatsapp group dedicated to your cohort. Each week you will explore a module online at your own pace. You will learn new concepts through short texts, audio content and videos. Exercises enable you practice what you learn and receive feedback from your trainers and peers. We also organise weekly, interactive online session. There our trainers will guide you to start applying new skills to your professional life .

A face-to-face training is also included in most of our courses. Training days follow a packed schedule of classroom sessions, field visits and group assignments. The tuition fee covers your course materials alongside lunch and snacks on training days. Accommodation, travel, visa costs, other meals and additional costs you might face are not included.

Scholarships are occasionally available for select courses. Check out our FAQs to find out more!

The Program

Phase 1: Partnership Building Tools

Block 1: Becoming competitive through collaboration

Explore the value of collaboration in Agribusiness Clusters. Learn to assess agribusiness partnerships. Develop skills to persuade agribusinesses to recognize their interdependence. Guide the process of creating shared solutions and pursuing joint opportunities.

Block 2: Building business relationships

Discover how to involve the right actors, build trust in business relationships, and develop competitive strategies for cluster formation. Learn how to secure stakeholder buy-in for long-term partnerships.

Block 3: Coaching towards vibrant agribusiness clusters

Master the tools and coaching techniques needed to guide agribusiness actors building and consolidating sustainable partnerships. Ensure long-term success by instilling commitment through ownership.

Phase 2: Facilitation and Coaching

Block 1: Essentials for building trust and creating commitment

Learn how to address common challenges getting stakeholders onboard and creating commitment. You will learn facilitation tools including listening skills, self-disclosure and facilitator neutrality.

Block 2: Handling conflict

Address conflicts and manage them according to the context. It is inevitable that conflicts surface in a partnership. Conflict management and feedback facilitation skills will enable you to nurture resilient, long-term relationships.

Block 3: Group facilitation and negotiation skills

Giving everyone a voice is essential to inclusive agribusiness. Arranging and facilitating effective meetings can be challenging especially when you face disagreements. You will learn to manage group dynamics and guide negotiations towards win-win solutions.

Block 4: Facilitating effective stakeholder communication

Facilitating multi-stakeholder communication and meetings is one of an agribusiness advisor’s core tasks. This is far from easy when a few dominate the discussion, others stay quiet and opinions differ. Learn to design meetings that create safe space where diverse perspectives are valued, people feel free to speak out, and meeting goals are successfully achieved within time.

Block 5:  The role of contracts

Often business advisors encourage suppliers & buyers to stimulate loyal business relationships through formal contracts. However, contracts are sometime broken: for example, farmers might continue to “side-sell”.  You will explore what role contacts can play in sealing win-win business relationships and creating loyalty among ABC actors.

Block 6: Generating income as agribusiness advisor & partnership coach

To become a successful agribusiness coach you need to be able to consistently sell your services. Are stakeholders willing to pay for your work when external funding dries up? You will learn how to generate income from agribusiness coaching. Discover how to formulate solutions that sell and attractive quotations for your potential clients.

Block 7: Agribusiness (cluster) partnership action & coaching practice plan

Now that you’ve acquired practical partnership facilitation and coaching skills you will create an ‘Agribusiness Partnership Action and Practice Plan’. This will help you apply what you’ve learnt to your own example case and guide you in integrating your new skills into your work.