Agri-programme sparks entrepreneurial spirit in its students

Beneficiaries of one of the largest scholarship programmes in agriculture education are turning into successful entrepreneurs, overcoming challenges and learning vital lessons to create employment for themselves and others.

Between 2016 and 2024, the students studied under scholarships at undergraduate, masters and PhD levels provided by the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) initiative, Transforming African Agricultural Universities to Meaningfully Contribute to Africa’s Growth and Development (TAGDev 1.0), and funded by the Mastercard Foundation.

Under the initiative, students were taught entrepreneurship and business management skills as part of the scholarship programme, in addition to their degree studies – knowledge they are using in entrepreneurship.

The TAGDev programme has trained a total of 567 beneficiaries, including 22 PhD, 317 MSc and 228 BSc undergraduate students.

Out of the total number, about 148 or 26%, just over a quarter, are engaged in entrepreneurial activities, some balancing their business ventures and their formal full-time or part-time employment, according to Emmanuel Okalany, RUFORUM’s alumni and transitions officer.

What do the entrepreneurs do?

Spread across East, South, Central and West Africa regions, the former students are running businesses, including eateries and agro-veterinary shops.

Some are also using their skills to engage in consultancy services and have gone back to their communities where they are offering agriculture advisory and veterinary services to farmers, or are engaged in value addition to agricultural commodities.

Irrespective of the level of education attained, the alumni, all having benefited from the bursaries owing to their economically disadvantaged backgrounds, are creating employment by hiring people to help them run their businesses.

And, while challenges have been numerous, these entrepreneurs have been learning on the job, surmounting hurdle after hurdle.

Venturing into the dairy industry

One such an alumna is Roseline Kiama who graduated from Kenya’s Egerton University in 2024 with an MSc in food science. Whereas, she combined formal employment and running a business in the past, she is now in business full-time.

In 2021, the 30-year-old initially tried her hand in the fairly crowded industry of dairy value addition, making yoghurts and other milk-based products, a business that rhymed well with her training. This was during the COVID-19 period after Kiama lost her job in a company in central Kenya, where she had worked briefly before the company closed due to the pandemic.

“Prior to this time, I had not thought of starting a business but, after the company I worked for closed down, I thought of something to do to earn an income using my skills,” she said.

“The milk business was not as easy as I thought. While it was initially doing well, challenges later arose with milk going bad despite maintaining the highest levels of hygiene and handling in general,” she said.

This led to frequent losses, yet she could not establish the cause, forcing her to abandon the trade. She learned months later that the silage fodder fed to cows by her supplier farmer just before milking was the cause, something she realised later during a training course organised by the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation.

Unfazed, she moved on to the business of fodder propagation after seeing a gap on the low adoption of high-quality improved livestock feeds for dairy farmers in her native Nyandarua County, a relatively new venture in the area.

This is a business she was first exposed to during her studies for the MSc degree. It has its challenges, including the fact that many farmers are used to grazing animals as opposed to feeding them in enclosed places. But Kiama is still soldiering on, having accepted that challenges are part of entrepreneurship.

“The agri-entrepreneurship training we received as TAGDev students, including business and financial management, plus community engagement, has kept me going,” she told University World News.

She was lucky to get a US$5,000 start-up capital injection after responding to a call for applications from the programme funder – the Mastercard Foundation.

Already employing two people, who are helping with the aggregation of sweet potato vines, among other plants, to support the dairy industry with improved feeds, she is planning to expand her business to the propagation of vegetables, as more farmers become receptive to her fodder business.

“I feel I’m using my MSc degree to serve society, because I’m teaching farmers new things, [and I am] introducing them to new feeds that will contribute to higher yields for their animals,” she explained.

‘I am in this to stay’

Lawrence Ouma has operated an agro-veterinary shop since 2021, having joined Egerton University in 2018 for a BSc in horticulture, and rushing home on weekends to oversee and help run the business in Busia County, Western Kenya.

Graduating in 2023 to an already established shop selling agrochemicals and farm inputs, including products such as fertiliser, chemicals, implements and tools used in farming, he was clear in his mind that he was not destined to seek employment, but to expand and grow his business, which was already being run by an employee.

He grew the shop by acquiring a licence that allowed him to stock veterinary drugs and related animal health and nutrition products, compelling him to hire a veterinary technician to handle the products and help advise farmers accordingly.

Besides running the shop, Ouma runs a horticulture consultancy that offers services across Kenya, where he visits farmers engaged in high-value crops farming, offering them advice at a fee.

While the biggest challenge so far has been a break-in at his shop, the inputs trade, he notes, is saturated with counterfeit products which complicates things for him and for farmers alike. In addition, a lot of farmers in his area still keep local cattle breeds that do not require some of the veterinary services he offers.

He advises students interested in business to first seek mentorship from those with experience, exercise patience to allow their start-ups to grow, and seek advice from those already doing it. “In my case, I was encouraged and guided by fellow students from Uganda and who were already running businesses back home, and I took heed of every word they told me,” he added.

“Also when you need to employ a worker, go for a qualified person, even if that person is expensive, so you are assured of some degree of success,” he counselled. “For me, I just love agriculture, meaning that I’m in this to stay, even if I get a job offer.”

Patience and perseverance

Entrepreneurship needs a lot of patience and perseverance to succeed, advises Gabriel Mahindu of Comrade Dairy and Food Enterprises, another TAGDev alumnus, who has worked in the dairy products business near his former university, Egerton, since 2018.

Mahindu and his partners, who have since expanded his business to process 250 litres of milk daily, currently have nine employees and are looking for funding to expand the business.

An experiential journey

According to Jean Damascene Tuyizere, a PhD Fellow at Virginia Tech University, United States, one secret to succeeding in entrepreneurship is making an early decision on what you want to become and where you want to live and work. This helps you to settle down easily and make lasting decisions.

Tuyizere, a Rwandese and a TAGDev alumnus, says that carefully selecting partners helps a business survive and achieve its objectives more easily.

“Even as I study, today I’m still running a business back home in Kigali. This is possible because my partners are people who have been known to me for decades, all of us having grown up together,” he explained. “This partnership has kept the business going, even in my absence.”

The TAGDev programme, according to its head, Professor Anthony Egeru, was founded in 2016 with three objectives: attaining individual, community and university transformation, with the latter acting as “vessels for change”.

Now in its second phase, the programme has been an experiential journey, with lessons on what universities can do, and with the alumni acting as change agents and ambassadors.