CHAIN

Although many people think of agriculture as low tech and innovation field, those involved in agricultural education or industry know that it’s actually quite the opposite – year on year new solutions and efforts are being made towards bridging the gap between the real life and classroom in agricultural field that change the life of students, farmers and entrepreneurs across the world. More and more farmers are turning to data science to make informed decisions using precision technologies. However, this kind of initiatives are much less (if any) observed in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that severely lags behind in their development despite the fact that most people are engaged in small farming as primary economic activity.

Scope

CHAIN engages a multilateral and multi stakeholder partnership that enhances relevance, quality, modernization and responsiveness of higher education in SSA enabling sustainable socio-economic growth against recent social, economic inequalities and decline in human development. Its general objective is to support modernization of agricultural education in Togo, Nigeria and Kenya by fostering a more holistic and human-centered approach to agricultural education, training and innovation.

Holistic approach to agricultural education sets the ground for intersectoral optimization of resources enabling sustainable employment and growth, through involvement of interdisciplinary teams, while human centred approach to agricultural education invigorates innovation potentials in each involved actor thus contributing to fully extorted universities potentials in terms of “education value chains” whereby agriculture stakeholders enhance the ways people and organizations interact within an institution, country or a region. Through promotion of participatory learning, the project invites cocreation of outputs and outcomes by the student body.

  

General objective

To modernize agricultural education in Togo, Nigeria and Kenya by fostering a more holistic and human-centered approach to agricultural education, training and innovation.

 

Objectives

 To develop competence-based master curriculum on Food Value Chain (FVC) at 6 partner high education institutions (HEIs);

  • To build teacher capacity at 6 partner HEIs from rural and remote areas to promote learning methods and use teaching methodology prone to entrepreneurial thinking and innovation, with emphasis on e-learning and digital tools.
  • To build teacher capacity at 6 partner HEIs from rural and remote areas to promote learning methods and use teaching methodology prone to entrepreneurial thinking and innovation, with emphasis on e-learning and digital tools.
  • In cooperation with private sector to establish Collaborative Holistic Agriculture Innovation Nests (CHAINs) at 6 partner HEIs and offer support to innovation initiatives of students, farmers, and entrepreneurs, enhancing their employability, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship.