Photo: © Margret Will

During two one-week training sessions on GIZ’s approach to contract farming as an inclusive business model in the agri-food sector, 13 consultants from African and European countries were trained as trainers and coaches, aka ToTC.

During the first week at GIZ Bonn, the trainees visited at Naturland and Weyers GmbH. Whereas the second week in GIZ’s office in Feldafing focused on practical experiences and a look at case studies brought in by the trainees.

This part was very hands-on, zooming in on building capacities to coach agribusiness companies and farmer-based organisations to develop new contract farming schemes — or to restructure existing ones.

Since GIZ aims to scale up their contract farming approach, having a pool of knowledgeable coaches and consultants available to them, was highly needed. Earlier on 14 projects and programmes had expressed a need for backstopping and coaching in contract farming schemes — altogether from 11 countries, mostly African but also some Asian countries.

The pool of trainers is ready to serve GIZ bilateral and global projects. It is one of a number of possibles avenues to promote agribusiness value chains from farm to fork.

As of now, all consultants are available for contract farming-related assignments. For the time being, they’ll be backstopped by the two international trainers who carried out the ToTC.

Photo: © Margret Will

The profiles of the trainers

The professional profiles of the expert trainers will be available for download soon. Check the CoP’s webpages for updates.

About the organisers

The two one-week-long training sessions took place in Germany — one in January and another one in March. They were organised by the GIZ Sector Project Agricultural Trade, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance and the Sector Project Agricultural Policy and Food Security together with the GFA Consulting Group Hamburg.

Contact

For more information, please contact Katharina Schlemper (katharina.schlemper@giz.de) or Carolin Voigt (carolin.voigt@giz.de).