Alberta Nana Akyaa Akosa
AGRIHOUSE FOUNDATION yesterday launched the fourth edition of its annual Agricultural Student’s Career Guidance and Mentorship Dialogue Bootcamp (AG-STUD) on the theme, “We have enabled and established the agri-youth. Time to scale-up to feed Ghana.”
The bootcamp is an agri-booster and capacity building initiative designed to empower Ghanaian youth in a futuristic way that also feeds into the country’s agricultural objective of achieving food security, while providing sustainable employment.
According to the Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation, Alberta Nana Akyaa Akosa, the pandemic, as grave as it has been, is positively directing Agrihouse toward its greater missions of growing and building resilience; introducing new interventions and up-scaling its projects among others.
Now in its fourth year, she said the bootcamp had trained and mentored about 600 students directly and about 20,000 students indirectly; adding that through the AG-STUD initiative, business clubs had been set up in about 10 institutions where students had come up with agribusiness ideas, grown them and nurtured them into real businesses. About 14 individuals have also nurtured their individual ideas and are now operating these businesses on their own.
The AG-STUD Bootcamp has also attracted the attention of high-profile persons including Shani Cooper, Israeli Ambassador to Ghana, former President John Agyekum Kufour and late President Jerry John Rawlings.
The 5-day event employs mentorship sessions, learning visits to relevant agribusiness institutions and places of interest, seminars, workshops, business tools and professional speakers in a structured setting that includes soft skills training development and capacity building in leadership.
This year, AG-STUD Africa will start on Monday, April 12 – Friday, April 16, with organizing partners including, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), and the National Farmers and Fishermen Award Winners Association of Ghana (NFFAWAG)
“At the end of AG-STUD 2021, our students should walk away, knowing how to select the right fertilizers for their crops; have a clear understanding regarding the rate and times fertilizers must be applied to guarantee maximum efficacy; and ways to place fertilizer in soil, developing their businesses and be able to sustain it,” Ms. Akosa noted.
“We intend to further assist each business club with the opening of a bank account, seed capital to commence the agribusiness idea/ initiative; a start-up input pack for farming and a business plan to direct their business idea,” she added.