AFC – 50 years of expertise and innovation

by Alexander Lotz, Junior Project Manager and Management Assistant

We are starting our journey in Düsseldorf, where AFC was founded under the name AFC Agriculture and Food GmbH International Consulting. Founder of AFC was Prof. Dr Otto Strecker (senior) who had previously worked as Director of the Institute for Agricultural Market Research of the Federal Agricultural Research Centre in Braunschweig from 1965 to 1967. Afterwards, he was Professor and Director of the Institute for Agricultural Policy and Market Research and holds an honorary professorship at the University of Bonn. Mr Strecker is considered a pioneer in agricultural marketing and contributed to the change from a primarily macro-economically oriented agricultural market theory to one that understands agricultural entrepreneurs as independently acting, economic entities. As a passionate consultant, his vision to found AFC was to provide production and marketing expertise to international agricultural initiatives.

We are implementing our first project with the illustrative name “Increase of meat consumption” in the Philippines. While the donor Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) would most likely not tender such a project anymore, AFC finally has its foot in the door of international development cooperation for good.

The company moves its headquarters to Bonn, the former capital of West Germany, and home to numerous organisations in the agricultural and food industry. Previously, AFC´s legal form and company name had changed multiple times, but the abbreviation AFC always remains unchanged.

Dr Hans-Joachim Leyrer becomes managing partner. In the same year, the German Agricultural Society (DLG) and AFC jointly found DLG-Agriservice, predecessor of today’s DLG-International. This cooperation created mutual synergies, since DLG gained access to a new, risk-free and international field of business and AFC profited from economies of scale, as DLG is a large non-profit organisation promoting technical progress and scientific advances in the food and agricultural industry. While nowadays DLG-Agriservice operates solely under the umbrella of DLG mainly as service provider for exhibitions and fairs, its first major development cooperation project was the Turkey’s Progressive Farmers’ Working Groups (afterwards: Önder Çiftçi Projesi (ÖÇP) in Tekirdag/Thrace). Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the project ran from 1988 until 1996. After the project officially ended, the structures remarkably remained and ÖÇP farmers continued with their working groups for decades – a prime example of successful and sustainable development cooperation.

After the German reunification, the regional focus extends to Central and Eastern Europe. With emphasis on restructuring and privatisation, projects often aimed at transforming formerly socialist enterprises. Restructuration of agricultural production cooperatives (LPGs) in the former GDR was carried out together with experts from IAK Leipzig. Starting in 1993, one of such projects in Eastern Europe was the Fruit and Vegetable Wholesale Market Bucharest, funded by GTZ and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). AFC implemented it until 2009 for a total of 16 years, which still makes it the longest project in AFC’s 50 years old history.

1992

We are launching our first project in financial sector development. Financed by the German Government, AFC conducts “Consulting Services for the Planning and Implementation of an Agricultural Credit System” in Latvia, cooperating with their Ministry of Agriculture. It took place from June 1992 to April 1994, marking the time in which similar to the before-mentioned projects, the ongoing privatisation process took place, also in the Baltic States. Therefore, agricultural producers and the processing industry expressed considerable demands for credits. The project addressed this movement through pre-feasibility studies, concepts and action plans for the agricultural and banking sector as well as through recommendations for policy objectives, bank supervision and an adequate agricultural credit system. For us, it was as a pioneering assignment in financial sector development that we would later build upon with the creation of a separate department to empower financial institutions and MSMEs to sustainably create growth through improved distribution, access and use of finance.

1997 2004 2006

AFC invests in Central Asia International Consulting (CAIConsulting) The Kyrgyz consulting firm with its headquarter in Bishkek has recently become a full sister company of AFC and is now an official member of the GOPA Consulting Group. Today, CAIConsulting’s Managing Director Kunnura Raiymbekova leads a team of enthusiastic, motivated project managers who have an excellent understanding of their local business climate, governmental institutions, educational establishments and political environment.

AFC and the Academy of German Cooperatives (ADG) start a strategic cooperation in international financial sector development projects. Located in Montabaur in Rhineland-Palatinate, ADG enacts as a leadership and management academy, focusing on cooperative banks, enterprises and organisations. We collaborated in multiple projects, in which our partner contributed with their knowledge as a bank-training institute and cooperative system specialist.

2007

AFC Consultants International becomes a member of the GOPA Consulting Group, Germany’s largest group of consulting companies in development cooperation. Johannes Buschmeier (formerly Director of AFC in charge of the department Eastern Europe and Central Asia) and Hans Otto (formerly Managing Director of GOPA) take over as Managing Directors. Mr Otto stayed in the position until he retired in 2013. Wolfgang Schmitt took over and held the position until 2019. Mr Buschmeier still holds the position of Managing Director of AFC Agriculture and Finance Consultants. The remaining AFC Consulting AG continues the business of management consulting mainly in Germany independently from GOPA Consulting Group.

After becoming member of the GOPA Group in 2007, AFC hosted several meetings with representatives of the holding and the group companies.

Above picture, from left to right: Dr Ute Jacob, Johannes Buschmeier, Dr Martin Güldner, Wolfgang Schmitt, Béatrice Bouju. Below picture, from left to right: Ines Meier, Eugen DiemelRellecke, Martin Eiling, Hans Otto, Hans-Joachim Ressmann-Esser, Berthold Averweg.

Dr Ute Jacob Director of the Agriculture & Agribusiness – Francophone department

“The special feature of AFC is that since 2007 there has been a Francophone Agricultural department, which before that also included a Hispanophone Agricultural department. So it was de facto divided from 2007 onwards. Despite the small number of francophone countries, the department has always managed to make a significant contribution to the order intake and number of projects in implementation. In the future, we will continue to focus on countries where we are well known and have already carried out many projects. With our engaged team, we look forward to the future with an open mind!”

2009

We start our all-time biggest project: the GIZ-funded “Market Oriented Agriculture Programme (MOAP)” in Ghana with a volume of approximately EUR 12 Mio. over almost 12 years until March 2021. It supported the development of a market-oriented agriculture in Ghana collaborating with the private sector along various agricultural value chains. By increasing climate-sensitive production, strengthening inclusive business models and enhancing capacities of common interest groups, it led to better product quality, higher incomes and more employment throughout different value chains. AFC also implements its direct follow-up project “Sustainable Employment through Agribusiness (AgriBiz)” on behalf of GIZ and co-financed by the EU. Aiming at improved framework conditions for 500 MSMEs in cooperation with the Ghanaian Ministry of Trade and Industry, it will run until 2024. Ever since the launch of MOAP, we remained active in the country, implementing 14 additional projects. The latest “Reform Partnership: Development Bank Ghana” funded by the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) will be implemented by our Financial Sector Development department.

AFC founds AFCi Consultants Maroc SARL AU. The sister company is in charge of managing donor contracts in Morocco and abroad on behalf of AFC and the GOPA Consulting Group. Since the beginning, Dr Ute Jacob and Johannes Buschmeier are the Managing Directors at AFC headquarters, with Abdessadik Faouzi being the Director on the ground in Temara, close to Morocco‘s capital Rabat.

“Teamwork makes the dream work”. Company excursion in 2013.

Management board in 2013.

Ines Gebhardt Director of the Human Resource Management department

“I would like to thank AFC for giving me the opportunity to continue working for the company abroad in Laos. Although, I miss the short stop with colleagues at the coffee machine, it has given me the chance to redefine my work/life balance. As I already had some HR responsibility in my previous position at AFC, the role as Director Human Resource Management is not a completely new challenge for me. People are the most important and valuable resource of any company. My challenge is to find, recruit and promote qualified talents and to use their qualities in a well-targeted way, so that they have incredible fun at work.”

2016 2017

When AFC reached a turnover above 20 Mio. EUR per year, four departments were formally introduced:

Anglophone Agriculture & Agribusiness department: Johannes Buschmeier (Director since 2007), Nina Thurn (Deputy Director since 2022)

Francophone Agriculture & Agribusiness department: Dr Ute Jacob (Director since 2014)

Financial Sector Development department: Holger Christ (Director since 2016), Sigitas Bubnys (Deputy Director since 2014)

Finance, Accounting & Contracts department: Petra Heinen-Manz (Director 2016 - 2019), Ines Gebhardt (Director 2019 - 2022), Ute Horn (Director since 2023), Fabian Amrath (Deputy Director since 2022)

2019 2020

Ines Gebhardt succeeded Petra Heinen-Manz and now holds the newly established office of Director Human Resource Management. In 2023, Ute Horn-Lemke, former GOPA Consultants’ Head of Shared Services Accounting and Head of Accounting for EPOS Health Management, took over as Director Finance, Accounting & Contracts.

The name AFC Consultants International changes to AFC Agriculture & Finance Consultants. It represents the two thematic focus areas, namely Agriculture & Agribusiness and Financial Sector Development.

Within Bonn, AFC moves from its former headquarters to a modern, energy efficient office space and introduces strict energy efficiency and environmental protection rules. They link-up to the following four impact indicators: flight emissions, paper, water, and electricity consumption. Since the indicator introduction, AFC constantly reduces these main consumables and achieves the certification of its Environmental Management System (EMS) according to DIN ISO 14001. In addition to the EMS applied in our headquarters, AFC compensates all its emissions from business flights through different initiatives, such as the introduction of efficient cooking stoves in Rwanda or the construction of fountains to provide clean drinking water in Sierra Leone. Since 2020, AFC Bonn operates climate neutral.

We turn the Covid-19 pandemic into an opportunity to increase our digital offers and develop our first e-learning course on Agricultural Finance in East Africa. This is followed by further offers, like our e-learning class “Climate Finance, Resilience & Financing for Biodiversity” in Uganda and a webinar series on Agricultural Value Chain Finance for the Egyptian financial sector.

Director

“As AFC is an integral part of the GOPA Group, which plays a major role in the Group’s success, it was important to both AFC and the Group management to maintain continuity in the Finance department. As I have been involved in the development of the Finance department for the entire time that AFC has been part of the GOPA Group, I was asked to take over this position for the last two years of my active employment in order to accompany the transition to the younger generation. As I personally hold AFC with its employees and management in high esteem, I was happy to take on this role and look forward to further intensive cooperation with the department.”

Christ

“Our specialised team is the competence centre for financial sector development within the GOPA Consulting Group. It is becoming increasingly relevant for new projects often in close cooperation with our sister companies for crosscutting topics. A well-functioning financial sector is the foundation that sustains every other sector in an economy triggering job growth and prosperity: Financial inclusion strengthens local businesses and enables employment as well as sustainable national growth. Topics like Green Finance, Digital Finance and Gender Finance will remain to be core pillars in the global transformation towards a climate friendly, more inclusive and just future.”

We celebrate our 50th anniversary under the theme “Experience and Innovation”. Proud of what we have achieved in the past decades, at the same time we are eager to follow our mission: providing competent consulting services to support agricultural, agribusiness and financial sector development in cooperation with public and private sector organisations in developing and transition countries. Today our permanent staff of approximately 63 professionals in our headquarters and our more than 1,000 experts in projects abroad are implementing around 100 projects in over 50 countries. Topics related to agriculture and agribusiness among others include crop and livestock production, food security, food safety, climate smart agriculture, marketing and trade, ICT in agriculture, policy advice. Simultaneously, we are working in financial sector development, such as in financial institutions development, agricultural & value chain finance, insurance systems, banking supervision and regulation as well as on MSME, digital, green, housing and gender finance.

The past years have taught all of us, how volatile and inter-connected the world’s different systems are – may it be natural, health, political, finance or food systems. We faced and are still facing multiple crises all at once. This includes climate change. This includes the Covid-19 pandemic. This includes the Russian war against Ukraine, inflation, political instability and food shortages.

We as AFC are well aware that we cannot deal with all of these topics, let alone solve them. Nevertheless, we will always address the ones, in which we are proficient. Specifically to mention is food security, which we expect to be one of the crucial challenges in the future. As short-term measures, in Ukraine we have proven that we are able to deliver emergency aid (see page 63) and improve resilience by providing finance coaching for Ukrainian entrepreneurs. As long-term measures, in countless projects we have effectively improved and established crop and livestock production, climate resiliency, value chains and food safety. In an ever-changing environment, thereby we ensure to make safe food available to people, which are in need of it. We enable people to find employment and make a living of their production, supporting them to cope with economic pressure. Promoting economies using a dual approach, besides agriculture production, our finance experts support individuals also in financial literacy, access to suitable financial products and insurance to improve their economic opportunities while lowering their risks – posed by climate change amongst others.

Respecting the tasks that lie ahead of us, at the same time, we feel well equipped to tackle them. That is not only due to our 50 years of experience, but also because of our continuous motivation to extend our horizons and adapt to future trends and developments. In an ever-changing world, we are always seeking to innovate – whether in our projects, e.g. through digital solutions in agriculture or banking, or in modern ways of working together. That is what we stand for: 50 years of experience and innovation. We want to thank all of you – our past, present and future companions for your trust and dedication to jointly keep on delivering sustainable solutions in agriculture, agribusiness and financial sector development worldwide.