Introduction

AYA Challenge is an Agricultural Entrepreneurship Programme designed to inspire the creation of wealth among youth people through new pathways of Agribusiness modelling. The program identifies, develops and turns agribusiness models into profitable and sustainable jobs as start-ups with creation of financial support avenues.   

 This is to inspire youth people into real time agriculture development along an entire value chain where they are encouraged to produce, add value, market their produce and learn how to manage their profits for a sustainable agribusiness start-ups and grow them gradually into viable big companies. Deliberately, this program wants to reduce average global farmer age from 60 years to about half, 30 years in Ghana and other African countries by increasing youth participation.

Our Approach

• Identification of potential candidates
• Residential Training
• Internships / Coaching
• Access to Financial Streams through reality TV
• Exposure / Networking
• Three years extended mentoring and Monitoring

A team of three (3) each can apply for the AYA-Challenge to compete for a funding to implement their projects as start-ups, within a total budget of GHC 50,000. The funding is being provided by angel investors, the general public, individuals and companies both local and abroad. The AYA-Challenge provides the platform to train these qualified agripreneurs who receive the funding for the agribusiness venture as well as managing the young agripreneurs in the incubations after.

Main Focus Area

The main area involve pitching of scalable vegetable agribusiness models spanning the entire vegetable value chain in focus including: production, value addition and processing, Marketing and financial management. These levels along the value chain must take into account all relevant standards and processes within the global framework, which would make an agribusiness establishment standout among the lot. This season would focus on three main crop categories namely Cabbage, Tomatoes and Pepper value chains as a business enterprise. Candidates must focus on at least one of these vegetables for the AYA-Challenge.

Applicants shall be selected based on the old regional administrations so that the final ten teams or groups for this competition shall be one from each of the ten old regions of Ghana.

 Production

• Selection of site, input, seeds, cultural practices, harvesting and handling.
• Innovations that support clean and pest free vegetable production
• Innovations that support less or no use of artificial or synthetic agro chemicals
• Deploying all relevant certification and standard processes for good vegetable production

On processing / value-addition:

• Innovative processing or value addition, packaging, presentation, labelling, traceability, quality, safety and delivering convenience to consumers.
• Deploying all relevant certifications and standard processes for good vegetable processing and value addition for consumption.

On Marketing:

• Innovative platforms to market certified vegetable products,
• Creating reliable marketing opportunities or aggregations that links wholesale / retail outlets as well as door to door deliveries where possible within the reach of consumers

Financial Management:

Teams must show an understanding in financial management and progression for their agribusiness for one financial year

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for challenge,

• Candidates must form a team of three with at least one female
• Teams must have a youthful ownership between 18 to 35
• AYA Challenge is regionally distributed, therefore team members must be residents in the region their team represents
• Teams must have a fair idea on the various value chains of the crop in focus
• Each team must have a process in place to acquire a family land (at least 2 acres) for their practicals
• Terms & Conditions Apply*

The application process is divided into three phases:

1. Concept note phase: Interested groups are invited to develop a concept note. An initial selection shall be conducted by a team at AGRIVIMs and select those that meet a minimum set of criteria. These groups will then be invited to submit a full proposal for the challenge.
2. Full proposal phase: The groups will be requested to develop a full proposal. To explain the concept further from production through to marketing with all financials and projections.
3. Interview Stage: groups would then be invited for interview after which final 16 concepts for the competition

1. Submitting a concept note

• Concept notes must be submitted before 28th February , 2020, 5 pm Ghana time. Concept notes should address the agribusiness models and strategies for implementation opportunities requested by this call, and include:

  • The concept note, in line with the concept note format (download attachment)
  • The attached application form
  • Detailed CVs of each team member
  • All documents need to be addressed and sent to the AYA-Challenge by e-mail:
    

    aya.challenge@agrivims.org