Webinar: Gender Lens for Business Sense: Targeting Agribusiness

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are an important player in driving agricultural growth in the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP countries). Women play a decisive role in this area, but have only limited access to land, technological inputs, loans, information, training or labour rights. 

Together with the GIZ project MOVE-ComCashew, Agribusiness Facility for Africa is implementing the Joint Action “Business Support Facility for Resilient Agricultural Value Chains” which is a combined effort of the EU Directorate-General for International Partnerships (INTPA), Organisation of African Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) and German Government through the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).  

The Joint Action project is working to:  

• Tackle value chain upgrading (contributing to economic and climate change resilience, food security, increased income, and employment) via scaling of successful training approaches and instruments, especially for climate-resilient agricultural entrepreneurship.   

• Support the implementation of blended learning, providing a mixture of face-to-face and online learning formats. 

• Support the creation of an association for local master trainers and trainers.  

• Promote ideas, as part of a competitive Matching Grant Fund, that improve the cocoa, maize and livestock value chains.  

• Promote South-South exchange and cooperation through events such as expert talks, exchange formats and conferences. As well as regional and nationwide public-private dialogue to overcome challenges in the three value chains. 

During the webinar, we will hear from Master Trainer and YMCA Togo  Secretary General, Gérard Kokou Atohoun, and Lou Lefort, Advisor and gender focal point in the program, who will share specifically about the Gender Makes Business Sense + (GmBS+) capacity development journey. GmBS+ is based on human-centred design and is a holistic approach that explores business development skills and mindset, culture, and belief systems among women, men, public and private sector, and communities to systematically change the gender imbalances in all agribusiness value chain segments. The purpose of the 5-day GmBS+ training is to improve the well-being of the agripreneur and their communities by creating thriving and profitable agribusinesses that enable employment opportunities. 
 

This webinar aims to  

• Provide an overview of the GIZ program and its blended learning approach 

• Showcase ways to effectively link with MSME’s in promoting gender transformative change for better business 

• Provide a practical case highlighting lessons learne