UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
Contents
ii
Foreword
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1.0 Background information
2
2.0 Summary
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3.0 Highlights of results from activities 3.1 Commercialization of agribusiness innovations supported and promoted 3.2 Agribusiness graduates with potential to become efficient entrepreneurs produced by tertiary educational institutions 3.3 UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and up-scaled
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4.0 Collaboration among the UniBRAIN partners: some highlights 4.1 Output 1: Commercialization of agribusiness innovations supported and promoted 4.2 Output 2: Agribusiness graduates with the potential to become efficient entrepreneurs produced by tertiary educational institutions 4.3 Output 3: UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and up-scaled.
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FARA-coordination
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5.0 Lessons learned
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6.0 Management
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7.0 References
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8.0 Annexes 8.1 Declaration of South-South collaboration 8.2 Declaration of cooperation for the establishment of a global agribusiness incubation network
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Acronyms and abbreviations
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12 12
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Regional and Pan-African Collaboration
Universities, Business and Research in Agricultural INnovation (UniBRAIN)
Annual Report 2012 Submitted to Danish International Development Agency (Danida), Denmark Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa 12 Anmeda Street, Roman Ridge, PMB CT 173 Accra, Ghana 2014
Citation: FARA, 2014. Universities, Business and Research in Agricultural INnovation (UniBRAIN) Annual Report 2012. Accra, Ghana: Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa. FARA encourages fair use of this material. Proper citation is requested.
For further information, contact: Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) 12 Anmeda Street, Roman Ridge PMB CT 173, Accra, Ghana Tel: +233 302 772823/779421 Fax: +233 302 773676 Email: info@fara-africa.org Website: www.fara-africa.org
ISBN 978-9988-8005-0- 9 (print) ISBN 978-9988-8216-10- x (pdf) Cover photo: Partnership in action – ANAFE and ABP Ltd. collaborating on improving education to create agribusiness entrepreneurs
Editing and design: BluePencil Infodesign, Hyderabad, India (www.bluepencil.in) Printing: Pragati Offset Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad, India (www.pragati.com)
Foreword
It is with great pleasure that I present highlights of the work of UniBRAIN and its partners during the period January to December, 2012. This has been a year of completion of the foundations for the UniBRAIN Consortia to get their incubators up and running. It was also the year in which all the UniBRAIN Facility Partners were able to demonstrate the full potential for each one of them to support the Consortia in their governance and management and in their commitments to clients and agribusiness education. In 2013, the emphasis for the Consortia will be on recruiting clients and getting them into business to generate jobs and incomes. The Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) produced by ABI-ICRISAT and FARA and the training outcomes should begin to impact the way in which the incubators are managed. This will be underpinned by the effort that has been put in throughout 2012 into the UniBRAIN Management Information and Collaboration System (UniBRAIN-MICS) to enable all the UniBRAIN Consortia and Facility Partners to be much more aware of what is or is not happening and to be more proactive in their management responsibilities. UniBRAIN has generated a lot of interest from potential incubators to join or in some way collaborate with their UniBRAIN peers. This is a welcome development as the survival of UniBRAIN beyond 2015 depends on expanding incubator activities so that partners can sustain themselves through economic charges for demanded services that they will provide to the higher number of incubators. At present, the six Consortia cannot bear the full costs of provided services. Expansion is also essential for UniBRAIN to deliver its third output; up-scaling. I wish to thank Danida for providing the resources to support UniBRAIN’s work. Prof Monty Jones Executive Director, FARA Foreword
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
1.0 Background information
Title of programme Name of lead institution and Executive Director Key partners Sub-Regional Organizations (SROs)
Other partners/ Lead partner Countries covered by programme
Universities Business and Research in Agricultural Innovation FARA—Prof. Monty Jones Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA), Conseil Ouest et Centre Africain pour la Recherche et le Developpement Agricole/ the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/ WECARD) and Centre for Coordinating Agricultural Research and Development in Southern Africa (CCARDESA) ABI-ICRISAT, African Network for Agriculture, Agro-Forestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE) and Pan African Agribusiness and Agro industry Consortium (PanAAC)/ FARA Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Uganda and Zambia
Planned (including Start-up and Inception Phase) Start date January 2010 End date December 2015 Total programme budget DKK 129 million (US$ 22.9 million)1 1. Exchange rate of 1 US$ = 5.6396 DKK, as at 31 December, 2012 (www.oanda.com)
2
Actual (including Start-up and Inception Phase) January 2010 December 2015 DKK 129 million (US$ 22.9 million)
2.0 Summary
UniBRAIN is an initiative of the Africa Commission convened by the Government of Denmark. It aims to create jobs and increase incomes through sustainable agribusiness development. UniBRAIN will realize this by creating mutually beneficial partnerships between universities, research organizations and the private agribusiness sector in order to create profitable agribusinesses while also improving agribusiness education to produce readily employable graduates and self-employed entrepreneurs. Three outputs envisaged from this collaborative effort are: 1. Commercialization of agribusiness innovations supported and promoted, 2. Agribusiness graduates with the potential to become efficient entrepreneurs produced by tertiary educational institutions; and 3. UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and up-scaled. UniBRAIN works with seven partner Institutions; ANAFE, PanAAC, ABI-ICRISAT, ASARECA, CCARDESA, CORAF/WECARD and FARA, the lead partner. Each partner has a defined role in facilitating various aspects of the Consortia’s incubators and their clients. The six pilot Consortia of universities, businesses and agricultural research institutions are located in five countries (Kenya, Ghana, Mali, Uganda and Zambia) and deal in various value chains; namely coffee, banana, sorghum, non-timber forest products, cereals, fruits and vegetables.
Summary
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
The Implementation Phase of UniBRAIN The Implementation Phase of UniBRAIN formally commenced in April 2012. Incubators spent the earlier part of 2012 completing the following seven requirements to institutionalize themselves as autonomous legal business entities: a. Develop and finalize agreements between the incubator and their respective Agribusiness Innovation Incubator Consortium (AIIC) members. This includes, among others, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection, procedures for accessing the human resources of the consortia members and what the members will charge the incubator for using these; usage and payment for facilities, due diligence etc. b. Develop consortium articles of association, agreements between the AIIC members in respect of governance, management, decision making structures, etc. This can be in the form of a memorandum of understanding or a shareholder agreement depending on how the incubator is established. c. Develop the governance structure of the incubator which has to be confirmed by the incubator’s competent authority. d. Ensure approval of the revised business plan by the incubator’s competent authority. The business models, plans and budgets for 2012 also have to be refined and approved by the competent authority.
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e.
Establish the financial management systems, which have to be approved by the incubator’s competent authority. These will, as a minimum, include the roles and responsibilities, planning and budgeting, reporting, accounting and audit systems and payments, receipts and payments, asset management (bank, cash and advances), fixed assets, payrolls, procurement, financial statements close process, including external audit.
f.
Open two dedicated bank accounts, one for UniBRAIN funds and another for internally generated revenue.
g.
Draft agreements with the authorities of the universities associated with UniBRAIN on the incentives for and modes of staff to be engaged in commercial innovation and on the benefit-sharing arrangements for use of intellectual property, staff time and facilities.
Due diligence of incubators A financial consultant was engaged to perform due diligence and assess incubators’ compliance with these requirements. A satisfactory report was a prerequisite to accessing the first funds for implementation. After completion of due diligence, the Consortia were advanced US$ 100,000 to acquire or renovate offices and business incubator facilities and recruit their managers and other key staff. A first function of the managers was to start identifying potential clients and develop work plans and budgets for implementing their Consortium’s business plan. At the time of writing, the Consortia have advanced to different stages depending on when the Financial Consultant confirmed that they had satisfied the due diligence criteria.
Partners’ activities The partners continued to align themselves with the needs of the Consortia, becoming more actively engaged with them as they geared up for implementation. ABI-ICRISAT teams assisted the Consortia in reviewing their business plans, operating procedures and governance. The UniBRAIN Facility was involved in helping to resolve management issues that emerged from the due diligence. PanAAC provided advice on the engagement of businesses in UniBRAIN, began the process of identifying mentors and provided advice to the Consortia on management, internships and client selection. ANAFE facilitated the involvement of universities and advanced the development of a framework for the development of agribusiness curricula, lesson-learning on graduate internships and coordinating value-adding research activities to capture the lessons from the processes of establishing the agribusiness incubators. The SROs (ASARECA and CORAF/ WECARD) developed proposals for identifying research products that are ready for commercialization and provided guidance to ensure effective participation of agricultural research institutions in the Consortia’s activities. In the following sections, UniBRAIN progress in the implementation phase is presented in three ways, as follows: a.
Progress is examined against milestones set for 2012 in the Programme Document (FARA, 2011),
b. Results from activities are presented according to the three UniBRAIN result areas, c.
Some highlights are presented of the constituent activities contributing to the results areas.
Achievements against set milestones Tables 1a and 1b indicate the progress made against set milestones for 2012 as contained in the Programme Document. Activities are classified under the relevant result area or output. While table 1a relates to specific activities, table 1b refers to the higher-level indicators.
Summary
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
Table 1a: Progress achieved in 2012 Status as at Milestone (date 31 December 2012/ Indicative activity accomplished by) responsible party Comments Result 1: Commercialization of agribusiness innovations supported and promoted 1.1 Develop viable January 2012 Completed, November Due diligence conducted by consultant business plans 2012/ AIICs, ABIbetween July and November ICRISAT, FARA 1.2 Establish infrastructure, effective governance structures, IP protection, patenting and due diligence procedures 1.2.1 Establish infrastructure March 2012 Not completed/ AIICs Incubators still renovating and building physical infrastructure 1.2.2 Establish effective March 2012 Completed, November Due diligence conducted by consultant governance structures 2012/ AIICs, ABIbetween July and November. The ICRISAT, FARA Facility Coordinator has followed up on emerging issues, as discussed in the Steering Committee meetings 1.2.3 Establish IPR protection, March 2012 Same as above Same as above patenting and due diligence procedures 1.3 Establish operational March 2012 Same as above Same as above procedures for incubators 1.4 Establish commercial June 2012 Same as above Same as above policies and conditions for providing commercial services 1.5 Train incubator boards Continuous but Partially completed/ Boards and incubator management training and management substantially advanced ABI-ICRISAT had been done but not completed because by June 2012 not all Consortia had recruited managers by June 2012. However, some board members received training in their capacities as leaders in the governance of the Consortia 1.6 Establish criteria June 2012 Started but not ABI-ICRISAT has provided a template and processes for complete/ AIICs, manual but each incubator has to customize selecting incubatees ABI-ICRISAT to fit its particular circumstances
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Status as at 31 December 2012/ responsible party Not formally started but gaining knowledge of potential clients was part of the business plan development process/ AIICs
Indicative activity 1.7 Identify, select and invest in incubatees
Milestone (date accomplished by) 5 July, 5 December, 2012
1.8 Train incubatees in business incubation and management
Continuous from quarter in which selected
Not started/ PanAAC, ABI-ICRISAT
Same as above
1.9 Provide incubatees with training in skills they require for their businesses
Continuous from quarter in which selected
Not started/ PanAAC
Same as above
1.10 Select, motivate and support business mentors
Started but not Country mentor databases established complete/ PanAAC by February 2012, then continuous
1.11 Provide incubatees with mentoring and coaching
Within quarter Not started/ PanAAC selected, until not required Result 2: Agribusiness graduates with the potential to become efficient entrepreneurs produced by tertiary agricultural institutions 2.1 Identify requirements for Ongoing from Started/ ANAFE improved agribusiness Inception and education Start- up phases 2.2 Develop improved agribusiness curricula
First products, June 2012
Comments Incubatees not yet recruited. By December 2012 incubators had commenced prospecting for and identifying potential incubatees. See projected numbers in table 1b
A directory has been compiled consisting of 9 to 13 mentors in each UniBRAIN country
Incubatees not yet selected
Preliminary survey conducted in 2011 in 9 Danida Priority countries which will serve as basis for a future study to identify gaps in the agribusiness curriculum First products A curriculum development framework developed in February was developed in February. As at 2012/ ANAFE 31Â December, ANAFE had developed a strategy for improving agribusiness education, to link up with the framework
Summary
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
Indicative activity 2.3 Provide contextualized and up-to-date training materials and resources
2.4 Develop improved agribusiness teaching and learning approaches, methods, aids and test and validate them 2.5 Track the careers of graduates to assess the benefits of the improved agribusiness education
Milestone (date accomplished by) First products, June 2012
First products, June 2012
Tracking system in place, June 2012
Status as at 31 December 2012/ responsible party The materials used in the training provided by ABI-ICRISAT supported by infoDev trainers was made available to the participants in training events/ ABI-ICRISAT, ANAFE Not started/ ANAFE
Tracer study ongoing but not complete/ ANAFE
Comments The link with infoDev facilities and the use of idisc.net training materials by the Consortia are noteworthy
ANAFE is currently undertaking a tracer study of agribusiness graduates in order to obtain baseline information on which areas of First BSc graduates agribusiness education should be improved. end 2013 Findings will be compared with a similar First MSc graduates study to be conducted, covering graduates end 2014 who have passed through incubators. Result area 3: UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and up-scaled 3.1 Support facilitated by Five additional Funding secured Following favourable consideration of the UniBRAIN incubator incubators established for 5 additional food a joint funding proposal by FARA and network provided to new by end of 2015 processing business ABI-ICRISAT, India’s Ministry of Food agribusiness incubators incubator centres/ Processing Industries (MOFPI) has approved FARA, ABI-ICRISAT, funding to set up 5 food processing other partners business incubators in five countries; Mali, and incubators Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon and Angola. These will be modelled along UniBRAIN lines and incubators in countries already with UniBRAIN presence may benefit from additional funding. The 3-year project will end in 2015. All partners and incubators are encouraged to leverage UniBRAIN funding to secure additional operational funds
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Indicative activity 3.2 Mobilize additional resources
Milestone (date accomplished by) Incremental DKK 50 million (about US$Â 9 million, as at 31 December 2012) from non-Danida sources by 2014
3.3 Promote good governance among UniBRAIN stakeholders
Continuous
3.4 Identify and use appropriate embedded Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tool for programme monitoring and evaluation
Information management and collaboration system running and validated by March 2012. Routine Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) reports produced by system from June 2012
Status as at 31 December 2012/ responsible party Started but not complete/ All partners and incubators
Comments MOFPI funds will provide about US$Â 200,000 incremental funding for the UniBRAIN Facility. Creating Competitive LivestockBias Entrepreneurs in Agribusiness (CCLEAr), AfriBanana, Agri Business Incubation Trust (AgBIT) and West African Agribusiness Resource Incubator (WAARI) are in the process of leveraging UniBRAIN funding to access additional non-Danida funding for their activities. This was a key feature Part of the process was to institute good of the due diligence governance structures within incubators, exercise/ FARA as approved by the due diligence exercise. Continuous surveillance will be provided by the relevant partners led by the Facility Coordinator to address emerging issues. Issues addressed so far include potential conflicts of interest and overstaffing relative to business volume at some incubator facilities Started late, wellUniBRAIN-MICS was developed in 2012. advanced but not On-site pilot testing was conducted in Accra complete/ FARA in June 2012, where FARA and CCLEAr were present. On-site training on how to access and use the tool was conducted in Uganda at Afri Banana Products (ABP) Ltd in October. Live data-inputting into the system is yet to commence; this will begin once all stakeholders are trained and the system goes live.
Apart from the activities and expected outputs in table 1a, the Programme Document sets out the target average programme outcomes to be achieved by each incubator by the end of 2012. Achievements against targets are presented under the relevant result areas in table 1b and are indicated in brackets in the last column.
Summary
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
Table 1b: Achievements against average target figures for anticipated AIIC outcomes in 2012 Outcome Indicators 1: Commercialization of agribusiness innovations supported and promoted Start-up agribusinesses supported, Number of start-up businesses to be incubated including university graduates Number of jobs to be created Total revenue generated (in DKK) Number of existing agribusinesses to be supported Enhanced innovation in established businesses to expand, diversify, enter new markets, etc. Number of jobs to be created Total incremental revenue generated (in DKK) Farm families benefiting from Number of farm families to benefit as expanded markets and better prices suppliers to supported agribusinesses 2: Agribusiness graduates with the potential to become efficient entrepreneurs produced by tertiary educational institutions Improved agribusiness education Number of agribusiness BSc candidates to receive improved agribusiness courses Number of agribusiness MSc candidates to receive improved agribusiness courses 3: UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and up-scaled Demonstrated potential for up-scaling By the end of the fourth year, 5 more agribusiness incubators established and 10 more in pipeline
2. This number refers to those that completed internships with ANAFE (27) and PanAAC (20) in 2011. 3. As reported by ANAFE. 4. Funding proposal accepted by MOFPI to support 5 food processing business incubators.
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Average per AIIC by end of 2012 (actual) 2 (0) 15 (0) 200,000 (0) 1 (0) 20 (0) 25,000 (0) 500 (0)
30 (472) 10 (63)
0 (54)
3.0 Highlights of results from activities
Laboratory facilities that incubatees can access at CCLEAr
This section presents highlights of results attained, in line with the result areas defined in the UniBRAIN Programme Document. A detailed elaboration of the activities culminating in the results is contained in Section 4.
3.1 Commercialization of agribusiness innovations supported and promoted •
Organizational institutionalization of incubators, though delayed, is well on course. This is a prerequisite for incubators to host incubatees and support commercialization. Considering that incubators will be operating as independent business entities, it was important that they complete all the legal requirements to achieve this, partly so that they can legally access various types of funds that will enable them to expand operations. Access to suitable physical premises in which to host all incubatees in the same space will enable cross-pollination of ideas and experiences during agribusiness incubation. Highlights of results from activities
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
•
Sensitization of members and leaders of incubator host institutions has created awareness about UniBRAIN activities and enabled hospitable environments for the development of UniBRAIN activities wherever they are located.
•
The compiled mentors’ directory of agribusiness experts in the five countries where incubators are operating will provide options for on-site support services where necessary, instead of relying on remotely located partners all the time.
3.2 Agribusiness graduates with potential to become efficient entrepreneurs produced by tertiary educational institutions •
Developed curricula will be validated, tested and used to realign agribusiness training in order to adequately and appropriately equip graduates from tertiary institutions for their roles as employees in agribusiness or agribusiness entrepreneurs.
•
Joint development of agreed priorities and strategies for implementation between ANAFE and AIICs will ensure harmonization and unity of vision in the pursuit of enhanced student experiences in agribusiness training through internships, industrial attachments and improved teaching methods, among others.
•
The tracer study, once completed, will serve as a baseline to compare effects of UniBRAIN interventions on the quality of graduates produced, and as a guide for refinement of the interventions where necessary.
3.3 UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and up-scaled
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•
The established links between UniBRAIN, Network of Indian Agribusiness Incubators (NIABI), Global Agribusiness Incubator Network (GABI) and Engineers Without Borders (EWB) have created wider awareness about UniBRAIN and will be instrumental for UniBRAIN’s up-scaling. The NIABI link has already yielded interest in soft landing services and imports from Africa for the Sorghum Value Chain Development Consortium (SVCDC) and AfriBanana Products (ABP) Consortia.
•
Funding secured from the Indian Ministry of Food Processing for the establishment of five food processing business incubators modelled along UniBRAIN lines will contribute to the programme’s up-scaling. The incubators will be located in Uganda, Mali, Ghana, Cameroon and Angola.
•
Initial findings and write-up from the ongoing University of Copenhagen study will be used to generate discussion with incubators and partners in order to distil lessons from incubators’ experience during their establishment. These lessons will be shared to inform improved future establishment modalities for incubators along UniBRAIN lines.
4.0 Collaboration among the UniBRAIN partners: some highlights
The partners continued with their uncompleted pre-implementation activities and other activities related to supporting the Consortia in their establishment. These activities included the sensitization of the leadership and key staff of all the constituent members of the Consortia, so that they would be empathetic to the UniBRAIN mission and would be encouraged and enabled to create supportive environments for its full development. ABI-ICRISAT led these activities. ANAFE continued with activities to forge partnerships with the tertiary institution members of the Consortia in internships, attachments and curriculum reviews. Pan African Agribusiness and Agro industry Consortium (PanAAC) continued to fulfil its roles of a) providing performance and quality assurance in respect of services provided by the incubators to agribusinesses and start-ups and b) identifying and motivating business mentors for start-ups and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), but this could not be fully operationalized since the Consortia were not yet actively recruiting clients. Hence PanAAC was most active in assisting ABP to revise their business models and operational manuals.
Collaboration among the UniBRAIN partners
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
PanAAC adds value to ABI-ICRISAT by helping contextualize the advice and materials derived from ABI-ICRISAT’s Indian experience. PanAAC also developed a directory of mentors. The FARA Secretariat in its lead role convened the biannual Steering Committee meetings. The UniBRAIN Facility convened meetings of the partners and incubators. The Facility also organized the training of incubators and partners in the use of the UniBRAIN Management Information and Collaboration System (MICS), which is a cutting-edge tailored web-based programme management and monitoring tool. A monitoring framework is being validated by stakeholders with responsibilities for monitoring linked to the UniBRAIN-MICS data and information collection, collation and reporting. The aim is to ensure comprehensiveness, avoid duplication and automate reporting so that management attention can be focused on doing the job in hand rather than reporting on it. There was minimal activity by ASARECA and CORAF/WECARD as they chose to postpone activities slated for 2012 to 2013 because of the need to synchronize the use of their minimal funding better with the state of development of the Consortia. The sub-agreement between FARA and Southern African Development Community /Food Agriculture and Natural Resources (SADC/FANR) was held up, pending the incorporation and inauguration of CCARDESA. Thus the support provided by SADC-FANR to AgBIT was financed by FARA and will be deducted from the grant provided for SADC-sub-region SRO activities. The following milestones were achieved during 2012 under the various result areas:
4.1 Output 1: Commercialization of agribusiness innovations supported and promoted ABI-ICRISAT organized a sensitization event for leaders of Consortia host institutions. Leaders, ten participants from the AIICs and three from the UniBRAIN Facility, participated in the 2012 Global Agribusiness Incubation Conference that was held in February in New Delhi, India. This was part of the uncompleted activities from the Pre-implementation Phase. It was followed by on-site sensitization of other members of the constituents of the Consortia in their home countries. The aim of the sensitization events was to create awareness about the activities of UniBRAIN and to ensure that host institutions would provide an empathetic environment for their Consortia. This was important for creating a foundation for the success of UniBRAIN.
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ABI-ICRISAT continued assisting the Consortia to prepare for implementation, including with refinement of business plans and other areas related to the seven requirements that Consortia had to fulfil before commencing implementation, as discussed in section 1 above. All preparatory activities were subject to the due diligence which differed from traditional due diligence in the amount of counselling provided to the Consortia by the Consultant. By the end of the year the Consultant had confirmed that five out of six incubators had fulfilled the requirements and could proceed to implementation. PanAAC contracted a consultant to assist ABP Ltd with their business models, management and governance. The Consultant also assisted with the drafting of Terms of Reference for several of the incubator’s committees including the Management Committee, Technical and Procurement Sub-Committee; and Business, Finance and Human Resources Sub-committee. PanAAC also assisted with the development of work plans and the associated budgets. In addition, the Consultant designed the recruitment instruments and led the interview process for the vacant positions of Business Manager, Accountant and Administrator. Key messages delivered at various meetings that he participated in with both ABP Ltd and Consortium for enhancing University Responsiveness to Agribusiness Development (CURAD) included the following: • Incubators should conduct simple studies on the needs and problems of their identified customer segments, • Criteria for identifying competent staff, • Incubators that deviate too much from their original business plan are more likely to fail, • Careful selection of incubatees is a key aspect of incubator success; and • Incubators should set realistic targets. One of PanAAC’s roles in the implementation of UniBRAIN is to identify and motivate mentors for start-ups and SMEs. To that end, PanAAC commissioned a consultancy to compile a mentors’ directory for the five countries that are home to the six UniBRAIN incubator consortia. Several domain and functional areas of expertise were delineated and the identified mentors were classified according to their expertise in these areas. The domains included; agribusiness, agriculture, horticulture, agri-engineering, animal production, bio-technology, agro-processing, and textiles. A functional area was defined as that relating to the candidate mentor’s industrial and entrepreneurial experience, including consultancy, business management, marketing, administration, quality control, SME support services, operations management and financial management. Between nine and thirteen consultants were identified in each country and classified accordingly. Table 2 shows the dispersion of these consultants across various domain and functional areas of expertise.
4.2 Output 2: Agribusiness graduates with the potential to become efficient entrepreneurs produced by tertiary educational institutions ANAFE held a workshop in February 2012 in Mombasa, Kenya for regional representatives to review the state and content of agribusiness curricula at BSc, MSc and PhD levels; and to identify and agree Collaboration among the UniBRAIN partners
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
Table 2: Number of mentors in specified domain and functional areas, by country Area of expertise Domain Areas Agribusiness Agriculture Horticulture Agri-engineering Animal production Biotechnology Agroprocessing Textiles Others Functional areas Consultancy Business management Marketing Administration Quality control SME support Operations management Financial management
Kenya (13 ) 5
Number of experts identified Uganda (13) Mali (11) Ghana (13)
Zambia (9)
8 6 4 1 0 0 8 0 1
4 4 2 0 0 1 3 2 6
1 11 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
3 5 0 0 10 1 0 0 7
3 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 4
0 8 12 3 4 2 3 4
12 1 0 2 0 0 1 1
11 2 0 0 0 3 0 2
13 2 2 6 0 0 1 2
6 6 0 0 0 3 0 6
on priority interventions to provide education which enhances the capacity of agribusiness graduates to create jobs. The workshop was the first in a series of activities to reform agribusiness curricula. As a result of the workshop, agribusiness curricula have been developed and are ready for testing. In response to incubators’ lack of clarity on how they are supposed to interface with ANAFE and the need to ensure that ANAFE offerings to incubators are demand-led, ANAFE visited five of the six incubator consortia in September and October in order to: a.
Familiarize themselves with the activities of the consortia,
b. Explore opportunities for partnership; and c.
Develop a joint strategy with consortia on how to work together in a win-win situation.
5. The number in brackets refers to the total number of mentors identified in each country.
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The planned visit to WAARI in Mali did not materialize owing to the unstable political situation in that country at that time. As an outcome of the visits the following areas were jointly prioritized for joint implementation with the consortia: a.
Improvement of the internship and attachment programmes,
b. Documenting incubator experiences, c.
Developing contextualized learning resources,
d. Skill enhancement for lecturers, e.
Lobbying university leadership to embrace new agribusiness approaches; and
f.
Undertaking tracer studies.
Full details of the visits are contained in a report titled ‘Revised Synthesis of Visit to Consortia Universities’ (ANAFE, 2012). Another output from the visits was a six-step strategy aimed at improving agribusiness education that links to the agribusiness curriculum framework developed in February. The following is a summary of steps: i.
Tracer study of agribusiness graduates,
ii.
Internship programme,
iii. Capturing of lessons from the incubation process, iv. Packaging and sharing information on the lessons, v.
Sensitizing institutional leaders of proposed reforms; and
vi. Working with willing universities to develop/review agribusiness curriculum. A separate document, ‘Strategy for Improving the Agribusiness Curriculum during UniBRAIN Implementation’ (ANAFE, 2012) provides further details on the strategy. ANAFE is currently undertaking a tracer study of agribusiness graduates which will serve as a baseline for UniBRAIN interventions. Another tracer study will be done for those graduates that have been associated with UniBRAIN incubators and activities in order to examine effects of the interventions.
4.3 Output 3: UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and up-scaled. Two declarations were passed in plenary at the Global Conference on Agribusiness Incubation that set up UniBRAIN as the entry point for South-South collaboration with NIABI and the proposed GABI (Annex 1).
Collaboration among the UniBRAIN partners
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
The link with NIABI has already identified interest in soft landing services and imports from Africa for the SVCDC and ABP consortia. Collaboration has also been forged with Engineers Without Borders, who have provided an expert to work with AgBIT in Zambia and a candidate has been identified for CCLEAr. As noted above, following the successful submission of a joint proposal by FARA/UniBRAIN and ABIICRISAT, the Indian Ministry of Food Processing Industries has selected the countries of Uganda, Mali, Ghana, Cameroon and Angola for setting up food processing business incubation centres. The incubators will be structured along the UniBRAIN model and ABI-ICRISAT will be the implementing agency for the project. This funding will extend UniBRAIN to Cameroon and Angola. Tentative requests for collaboration with UniBRAIN have been received from Cape Verde, Burkina Faso, Togo and Nigeria. The University of Copenhagen is conducting a study in order to document lessons learned from the implementation of UniBRAIN. The aim is to enhance performance in implementation by both the pilot incubators and future prospective incubators that will be formed along UniBRAIN lines. In this regard, researchers from the University of Copenhagen completed their first round of visits to all consortia except WAARI in Mali during the last quarter of 2012. The report of their findings from the UniBRAIN consortia institutionalization experience and other experiences during the pre-implementation phase will be shared and discussed with all partners and consortia. This study is linked with the other research activities to optimize the opportunities for value-addition and efficiency in data collection.
FARA-coordination The first bi-annual UniBRAIN Steering Committee meeting in the Implementation Phase was held in Kigali, Rwanda, in May. The meeting advised that the UniBRAIN work plans and budgets that were presented for approval be recast to avoid duplication of activities by partners and to ensure that there would not be any double counting in the budgets. The second Steering Committee meeting was held in November. Among the issues to be followed up by the Facility Coordinator was the indication of potential overstaffing that could absorb too much of the available funds before the Consortia could generate their own funds. Avnon Consulting was contracted to develop and validate the tailored UniBRAIN Management and Collaboration System (UniBRAIN-MICS) referred to above. UniBRAIN-MICS is a web-based informationsharing, knowledge-management, collaboration, monitoring and reporting tool that serves geographically dispersed stakeholders. It enables stakeholders to interact remotely and in real time to keep each other informed and to facilitate programme management. When fully operational, it will among several other things, make the following possible: • Through the incubatee portal incubatees will be able to record the number of their genderdisaggregated employees with details on the nature and duration of their employment and earnings.
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Incubatees will be able to generate invoices and other essential business documents. With a record of expenses also entered, profit and loss statements for each incubatee can be generated by the incubator at any time at the stroke of a key.
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At the incubator level, the portal facilitates recruitment of incubatees from the time they are just prospects to when they have been accepted into the incubation programmes.
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The incubators will also use UniBRAIN-MICS to manage incubatee coaches.
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At the level of partners, UniBRAIN-MICS helps ensure that all partners’ activities fall within their mandates and don’t duplicate the activities of others. It automates their financial and technical reports, thus reducing the time and cost of these routine functions.
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The sub-regional research organizations (SROs) can, through the UniBRAIN-MICS, showcase technologies that are ready for commercialization and, through the incubator manager, can link with firms that are interested in fabricating and disseminating them. The progress towards commercialization is tracked by UniBRAIN-MICS.
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Through its own partner portal ANAFE will be monitoring progress in improving the delivery of agribusiness education, graduate career progression and the status of students on attachments, interns and graduate start-ups. These are important data for monitoring the scaling of UniBRAIN products and outcomes.
Thus UniBRAIN-MICS facilitates collation and analysis of all information from base to top and the preparation of reports for the UniBRAIN Executive Committee, Steering Committee, Danida and other interested donors. It will save time and costs, as long as all stakeholders input their data as required. Data-generated will be useful as UniBRAIN scales up. The tool has undergone successive stages of development and refinement. A workshop was convened at FARA in June 2012 for the Consultant to demonstrate the use of the tool and to obtain suggestions for its further refinement. Subsequently on-site training has been scheduled for all incubators to learn how to use the tool. By December, the training had been conducted at ABP Ltd in Uganda. The inaugural joint partners’ and incubators’ meeting was held in Nairobi in August primarily for partners to agree on a schedule to produce 2013 work plans and budgets in time for approval by the Steering Committee Meeting in November. This was in view of the delay in submission and final approval of the 2012 work plans and budgets which led to delayed release of funds and implementation. The agreed schedule is shown in Annex 2. As a result of this intervention, the work planning and budgeting process for the 2013 cycle of funding was better coordinated and work plans were more responsive to incubators’ real needs. However, timeliness of planning and reporting still remain weak areas and will continuously be monitored to enhance performance. Collaboration among the UniBRAIN partners
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
5.0 Lessons learned
It is evident from the experience in 2012 that while the merit of the founding principle for partnerships between universities, research and business is more clearly demonstrable as UniBRAIN progresses, it remains true that it is unique to UniBRAIN. This means that there are a lot of lessons to be learned about how to get such diverse institutions to collaborate effectively and efficiently. These lessons will be especially useful to inform how UniBRAIN improves processes as it scales up. One of those lessons is that it takes time to develop the required trust and harmony, lack of which can frustrate the meeting of otherwise easily achievable deadlines. Decisions that are quickly made in business tend to follow long bureaucratic routes in other institutions. The result was that in maintaining the principle of quality before speed in decision making, UniBRAIN was overly optimistic in its estimation of how long it would take to institutionalize incubators as independent businesses.
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Another factor that has contributed to delayed institutionalization of incubators is the dependence on inexperienced and already busy consortia members to complete the establishment processes. All individuals from the Consortium members had full time jobs and because they could not devote their time fully to completing the process they shared tasks, with inevitable opportunities for confusion, resulting in the waste of time. As indicated above, such Consortia should be enabled to procure professional help in properly establishing their businesses and governance. The partners’ and incubators’ meeting in August revealed that there was still a lack of sufficient understanding among the partners and Consortia about their reporting and other requirements. Actions taken during this meeting to streamline the work-planning and budgeting process have shown that coordinated planning, with clear knowledge and adherence to guidelines, can greatly enhance timely implementation of planned activities. A lot still remains to be done in this area.
Lessons learned
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
6.0 Management
The UniBRAIN Facility was coordinated by Mr Ralph von Kaufmann, the Facility Coordinator. He was assisted by Dr Pia Chuzu, the UniBRAIN Programme Officer, Mr Kofi Adin, the UniBRAIN Community Manager and Dr Jean-Claude Bidogeza, UniBRAIN Postdoctoral Associate. Mr Kofi Adin, formerly UniBRAIN Community Manager, was elevated to the position of UniBRAIN Accountant. We congratulate him on his promotion. His Community Management duties have been taken over by Dr Jean Claude Bidogeza. In addition to his primary research functions Dr Bidogeza also provides administrative support to the FARA/UniBRAIN Facility Nairobi office. We welcome Dr Bidogeza to the UniBRAIN family.
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7.0 References ANAFE. (2012). Revised Synthesis of Visit to Consortia Universities. ANAFE. (2012). Strategy for Improving the Agribusiness Curriculum during UniBRAIN Implementation. FARA/UniBRAIN. (2011). Programme Document: UniBRAIN Implementation Phase.
References
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
8.0 Annexes 8.1 Declaration of South-South collaboration
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8.2 Declaration of cooperation for the establishment of a global agribusiness incubation network
Annexes
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UniBRAIN Annual Report 2012
Acronyms and abbreviations ABI-ICRISAT ABP AgBIT AIIC ANAFE ASARECA CCARDESA CCLEAr CORAF/WECARD CURAD Danida DKK EWB FARA GABI ICRISAT ICT IPR M&E MICS MOFPI NIABI PanAAC SADC SADC/FANR SME SOPs SRO SVCDC UniBRAIN UniBRAIN-MICS US$ WAARI
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Agribusiness Incubator-ICRISAT Afri Banana Products Agri Business Incubation Trust Agribusiness Innovation Incubator Consortium African Network for Agriculture, Agro-Forestry and Natural Resources Education Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa Centre for Coordinating Agricultural Research and Development in Southern Africa Creating Competitive Livestock-Bias Entrepreneurs in Agribusiness Conseil Ouest et Centre Africain pour la Recherche et le Developpement Agricole/ the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development Consortium for enhancing University Responsiveness to Agribusiness Development Danish International Development Agency Danish Krone Engineers Without Borders Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa Global Agribusiness Incubator Network International Centre for research in the Semi-Arid Tropics Information and Communication Technology Intellectual Property Rights Monitoring and Evaluation Management Information and Collaboration System Ministry of Food Processing Industries Network of Indian Agribusiness Incubators Pan African Agribusiness and Agro industry Consortium Southern African Development Community SADC/ Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Small and Medium Enterprises Standard Operating Procedures Sub-Regional Organization Sorghum Value Chain Development Consortium Universities Business and Research in Agricultural Innovation Universities Business and Research in Agricultural Innovation-Management Information and Collaboration System United States Dollar West African Agribusiness Resource Incubator
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