The AFSA Convening on African Agroecological Entrepreneurship and Territorial Markets #AAEC2022, in Kampala (May 24-26) gathered 200+ entrepreneurs, Funders, civil Society, and Business Development Service (BDS) organizations like SHONA from more than 30 African countries. The aim was to strengthen the ecosystem for Agroecological Enterprise development and foster more regional market access on the continent.
Since early 2021, SHONA has been building its position as a Business Development Support (BDS) provider in the agroecological space in East Africa. We have been doing so by focusing on three different yet complementary agri-business development approaches with a strongly regenerative mindset.
But, first, some definitions. In short, Agroecology is the applied science of natural living systems, ecology, to agriculture. It’s a science, but also a set of holistic farming practices, and a movement for social justice and food sovereignty. While the 4 principles of organic agriculture in themselves reflect the 13 principles of Agroecology, organic in a strict sense refers to what can be sold as such according to a list of technical legal specifications for a given market. Regenerative agriculture refers to farming practices (zero tillage, cover crops, rotational grazing, etc.) that aim at regenerating soil health. But, before the hype, its founding fathers and mothers also explicitly included strong social and environmental considerations to move beyond organic towards a more holistic and inclusive approach. To encourage a never-ending journey to becoming more and more regenerative or agroecological.
Confusing? Maybe. Below are 3 visualizations that, in my opinion, may work to represent these definitions in practice. Table Debates provides another, interactive visualization tool.
Agroecology is Good Business and fits right in with SHONA’s long-term strategy.
SHONA’s role in building the East African ecosystem
Together with our partners; The Regeneration Fellowship, Biovision Foundation, Transformational Investing in Food Systems (TIFS) Initiative, and the African Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), we organized a side event on May 25th to informally bring together the key actors in East Africa. We presented the three agroecological entrepreneurship initiatives we are currently working on.
With The Regeneration Fellowship (TRF) we are developing an innovative approach to enterprise development and ownership. The start-up studio model we want to pilot in East Africa will empower a group of 30 Ugandan entrepreneurs to build and own their regenerative agri-food companies. To contribute to a more equitable, inclusive, and regenerative food system, these ventures will be developed based on a participatory analysis of the Ugandan food system.
Moreover, we will build these ventures based on steward ownership principles to change the way our food companies are managed, financed, and owned.
With Biovision, we are preparing to launch an Agroecology Accelerator in Uganda in early 2023. Good businesses with strong Agroecological practices and intentions will be accompanied, trained, and supported towards proof of concept, traction, and scale. They will be trained and supported with mentoring, expert advice, and access to friendly revenue-based loans in the range of 40 to 200 million Uganda shillings.
In addition, with Rikolto we are currently implementing a more general youth agri-business incubation program called “Generation Food”.
Taking a large group through a two-day hackathon (2×200 participants), a two-week boot camp (2×75), and a 12-months mentorship process (2×20) in Mbale and Gulu, the program deliberately aims at access to finance in the end.
A Coordinated Agroecological Enterprise Development approach
Working on the implementation of these different approaches to business development, SHONA is well-positioned to contribute to building the ecosystem. To continue the conversation on a more coordinated approach for Agroecological Enterprise Development, we plan to organize a follow-up conversation with all the key ecosystem actors that could not join the in-person event in Kampala. We are convinced that such a coordinated approach provides multiple benefits.
With a group of key agroecology stakeholders and BDS organizations, we could coordinate the development, piloting, funding, and scaling of different agroecological business development approaches. Moreover, we would co-create the platform for agroecological and like-minded actors to interact, learn and build the ecosystem for more entrepreneurship in regenerative agriculture in East Africa.
This bundling of different business development approaches (start-up studio, incubation, acceleration) would be an opportunity to leverage more funding into agroecological entrepreneurship, jointly develop a set of actionable policy tools, and drive forward shared learnings on these effective approaches In the medium term, this approach would ideally be complemented with an investment vehicle to which the agroecological entrepreneurs going through the different programs would be able to apply.
In the spirit of SDG 17, Partnerships for development, we would be building the ecosystem together. As a learning network, we would co-create knowledge, tools, best practices, and learned lessons and share those with the wider field through ecosystem reports. We would be building a focused community, bringing together investors, foundations, agroecological entrepreneurs, and BDS partners. And, finally, this would be even more relevant when combined with an investment fund, we would be building and sharing the pipeline for more investment-ready agroecological enterprises in East Africa.
The Global Conversation on funding Agroecological Entrepreneurship
Rex Raimond (TIFS Initiative) describes the global scene: “Food systems should provide food security and nutrition for all, dignified livelihoods for food producers and workers, a stable climate, and healthy, diverse ecosystems. Current food systems fall far short of these goals. The Scientific Group of the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021 estimated the annual costs of environmental, health, and economic impacts of food systems at around US$29 trillion per year, compared to the economic value of food sold at market prices of US$9 trillion per year. The true cost of food is disproportionally high!
Rex continues: “The challenge and the opportunity are to realign public and private capital to avoid negative externalities and generate positive food system outcomes, which would bring tremendous gains to the world economy. The necessary transitions will require new financing approaches because current, linear approaches do not work in complex systems. Developing a new field of systems transformation finance is an urgent task”.
Biovision Foundation is our key agroecological partner on advocacy and business acceleration in East Africa. By developing the accelerator with Biovision, we decided to move further into Agroecology. Our partners like Biovision, TIFS Initiative, the Agroecology Fund, The Global Alliance for the Future of Food, and Integrated Capital Investing are leading the conversation for more funding for agroecological entrepreneurship on the global level. Other key actors in this conversation include the Netherlands Food Partnership, IKEA Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and many others. We will be working together to foster its materialization in East Africa and leverage more philanthropic capital and impact investing in the above-mentioned BDS initiatives.
If you’d like to join us on this journey or collaborate with us, reach us by completing this google form.
**Many thanks to Hannes Van den Eeckhout for writing this article!