ACBF and ABF define joint work packages for promoting sustainable agribusiness development

From left to right: Julika Stauber (ABF), Simon Striegel (ABF), Edem Messa-Gavo (ACBF), Melanie Hinderer (ABF), Bernard Agbo (ABF), Mbacke Niang (ACBF), Magnus Schmid (ABF), Anja Metz (ABF), Cynthia Benon (Moderator), Erick Sile (ABF), Maxime Dongo (ACBF)

16th February 2024, Accra, Ghana. The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) and the GIZ project Agri-Business Facility for Africa (ABF) worked extensively on their joint objectives and defining concrete work packages for action during a two-day workshop taking place at ACBF’s Office in Accra on 14th and 15th February.

After having signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in December 2023, representatives of ACBF and ABF came together for a strategic workshop on their collaboration. The workshop started by collecting the expectations for the two-day workshop and continued with a deep dive into ACBF’s and ABF’s activities and mode of deliveries. It became even more apparent that not only the abbreviations of the two players are quite similar but also a lot of synergetic and complementary workstreams exist which set the perfect basis for the next day. On the second day, the representatives started with a collection of potential joint areas of intervention that each representative took away from the first workshop day. Again, this exercise showed that ACBF and ABF think in the same strategic direction and led to the validation of three major areas of intervention for which the participants defined clear joint objectives. To making the collaboration even more tangible and enabling a timely start of the joint work packages, they defined activities, timelines, milestones as well as focal points for 2024.

The defined work packages focus on:

·       E-learning: Increasing the access to agribusiness training programmes to improve knowledge, skills and attitude

·       The establishment of the International Agribusiness Practitioners Association (IAPA): Establishment and formalization of a functional trainer organization

·       The Matching Grant Fund (MGF): Institutionalization of the MGF for further resource mobilization and streamlining the MGF management cycle.

·       Knowledge generation and sharing in agribusiness: Jointly harnessing and harvesting knowledge and sharing knowledge and results for dissemination of knowledge for use and upscaling of impacts.

All in all, the baseline for a fruitful cooperation has been laid this February and all representatives are looking forward to the joint implementation of the priority work packages to promote sustainable agribusiness development.