Skills & Strategic Partnerships key for Agro-prenuers,TechnoServe

The Managing Director, TechnoServe ,Juliet Kyokunda, is urging farmers to plant other crops to enable them cope with unfavorable market prices whenever it is harvest time.

Her remarks follow the persistent frustration most farmers have to endure whenever prices go down as a result of surplus harvests.

This was during the entrepreneurship roundtable program hosted by the non-profit organization.

“With Vanilla for example, when prices are low, people cut the vines and start from scratch, but if they have different ways of diversifying their income they are able to keep the vines even when the prices are low.”

She added , “usually we have 5 years ,today the prices are high people reap and everyone is planting and when they go low there is no vanilla at all, so we are trying to make people understand how to run these  businesses  so handling the vanilla post-harvest processing and packaging are some of the things we  work on.” 

Small and medium sized business enterprises are catalysts for economic growth in East Africa and most of the food, electricity and daily essentials are delivered by them. However, lack of capacity and skills to grow to the next level are the key barriers.

Alice Waweru the Entrepreneurship Programs Director East Africa , TechnoServe, explains that there is need for them to form associations to enable them lobby for the sector, access digital technology which also aids in the access of supplies and peer networking while being part of developing appropriate partnerships.

“Many people think that finance is the main challenge but capacity is the number one biggest challenge or an enabling environment, even when people argue that there is a lot of money out there for them, it is not appropriate,” Waweru noted.

This is on the background that majority of people are employed by the sector and most of the funds given to them do not suit their exact needs.