UniBRAIN is an initiative that aims to link university education, research, and business in sustainable agriculture in Africa. It is supported by the Danish government and facilitated by seven partner organizations. UniBRAIN establishes agribusiness innovation consortia between universities, businesses, and research institutions in key agricultural value chains across Africa. The consortia provide resources and services to commercialize innovations and produce entrepreneurial graduates. The overall goal is to contribute to job creation and income growth in Africa through sustainable agribusiness development.

1. UniBRAIN is an initiative of the
Africa Commission, which is
supported by Danida
UniBRAIN
Brief No.1: Realising the potential of Africa’s youth by
linking university education, research and
business in sustainable agriculture

2. UniBRAIN will realise
the potential for
investment in African
agribusiness by
breaking barriers and
fostering collaboration
between universities,
business and research
to create cultures and
environment that will
value, encourage and
enable innovation and
produce graduates who
are problem solvers,
decision takers and
successful
entrepreneurs.
What is UniBRAIN?
UniBRAIN is an initiative for advancing agribusiness incubation and improved
agribusiness education in Africa. It is supported by Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (Danida), and facilitated by a team of seven partner institutions. One of these
is the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), which hosts the UniBRAIN
coordination unit at its Secretariat in Accra, Ghana.
The other partners are three African sub-regional organisations (SROs):
 Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa
(ASARECA)
 Conseil Ouest et Centre Africain pour la Recherche et le Développement
Agricoles / West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and
Development (CORAF/WECARD)
 Centre for Coordinating Agricultural Research and Development in Southern
Africa (CCARDESA)
And three other pan African and international organisations:
 African Network for Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resources
Education (ANAFE)
 Pan African Agribusiness and Agro Industry Consortium (PanAAC)
 Agri-Business Incubator of the International Crops Research Institute for the
Semi-Arid Tropics (ABI-ICRISAT)

3. UniBRAIN supports 6 pilot agribusiness innovation incubator consortia
(AIIC), which work in critical African agricultural value chains.
 The Consortium for Enhancing University Responsiveness to Agribusiness
Development (UniBRAIN-CURAD) focuses on plantation cash crops.
Specific value chain: coffee
 Afri Banana Products Limited (UniBRAIN-ABP Ltd) focuses on staple food and
cash crops.
Specific value chain: banana
 The Sorghum Value Chain Development Consortium (UniBRAIN-SVCDC)
focuses on smallholder dry land food grains.
Specific value chain: sorghum
 The Creating Competitive Livestock Entrepreneurs in Agribusiness (UniBRAIN-
CCLEAr) focuses on smallholder livestock.
Specific value chain: livestock
 The West African Agribusiness Resource Incubator (UniBRAIN-WAARI) focuses
on agro-forestry products.
Specific value chains: non-timber forestry products, cereals and fruits
 The Agribusiness Incubation Trust (UniBRAIN-AgBIT) focuses on tropical fruit.
Specific value chain: tropical fruit and vegetables

4. What is the Africa Commission?
The Africa Commission, which was launched by the
Prime Minister of Denmark in 2008, convened a
series of intensive consultations on a new agenda
for international development cooperation. The
conclusion:
African universities are not sufficiently geared to
meet the needs of industry. Graduates often cannot find employment, while
many small businesses lack staff with the education and skills needed to drive
innovation. Essentially, the relationship between the demands of the private
sector and what universities teach is too weak. However, studies show that
when university graduates do business, they create more jobs than those
without a university education. Nowhere are these deficiencies more critical
than in agriculture, Africa’s dominant industry.
The UniBRAIN initiative was created to realise the huge potential for synergy
between university education, research and private sector development in the
pursuit of sustainable agriculture and agribusiness. It was designed to catalyse
and advance African agricultural innovation by bringing these three parties
together in joint agribusiness innovation incubation consortia (AIICs).
The Africa Commission believes that African universities need to be engaged
with private enterprise at all levels, including smallholders and firms in local
and distant markets. By linking across agricultural value chains — locally,
nationally and regionally — universities will be better able to educate
entrepreneurs who can tap the enormous under-exploited potential of African
agriculture for growth, job creation and poverty reduction.

5. What are UniBRAIN’s objectives?
Our objectives will be realised through 3 outputs.
Output 1: Commercialisation of agribusiness innovations supported and
promoted.
Output 2: Agribusiness graduates with the potential to become efficient
entrepreneurs produced by tertiary educational institutions.
Output 3: UniBRAIN’s innovative outputs, experiences and practices shared and
up-scaled.
Our development
objective:
To contribute to enabling
African countries to
create jobs and raise
incomes through
sustainable agribusiness
development.
Our immediate
objective:
To enable universities,
business and agricultural
research institutions to
commercialise agricultural
technologies and produce
graduates with
entrepreneurial and
business skills through
agribusiness incubator
partnerships.
These three outputs will be
achieved through the six
consortia with the help of
UniBRAIN grants and technical
support.
UniBRAIN promotes networking
through which the incubators will
benefit from each other’s
experiences.
In addition to sharing lessons and
best practices, great scope exists
for accelerating the spread of
commercially viable agricultural
technologies across the continent
and globally.

6. Resources and services of UniBRAIN agribusiness
innovation incubators
 Access to the human and infrastructural resources of the
consortium
 Sharing, dissemination and up-scaling of innovation and
research outputs
 Agro-technology development and transfer
 Facilitation of social and venture capital
 Technology packaging
 Investor start-up linkages
 Technical consultancy on customer,
product and business model
development
 Mentoring
 Modular training programs
 Market research and market
development
 Access to the incubator’s brand
assurance of quality
 Access to relevant agricultural
research outputs
 Contribution to improvement of
tertiary agribusiness curricula and
training
 Support for soft landings
 Opportunities to join value-adding
networks
UniBRAIN provides
opportunities for
partners to showcase
their expertise and
ingenuity at trade fairs
and exhibitions.
Above: displaying
innovative food
products.
Left: demonstrating
how an irrigation
system can be operated
with a mobile phone.

7. Establishing agribusiness incubators is a complex and demanding task. While
the tripartite university-business-research approach is a source of strength,
it inevitably adds additional layers of complexity. Fortunately, UniBRAIN can
benefit from the capacities of FARA and the SROs in research, ANAFE in
tertiary education, PanACC in agribusiness, and the experience already
gained by ICRISAT-ABI as well as the World Bank’s commitment to business
incubation in Africa through infoDev.
UniBRAIN will provide grants to enable the agribusiness incubators to
establish themselves and provide services to start-ups, SMEs, and innovative
firms and agribusiness faculties. This will provide access to the human,
infrastructural and financial assets of the university, business and research
consortia which own the incubators.
If farmers are the backbone
of African agriculture, the
agribusinesses are the legs
that support it.

8. UniBRAIN Contacts
UniBRAIN Facility Coordinator
Mr Ralph von Kaufmann
Roaming tel: +254 733 634 508
r.vonkaufmann@fara-africa.org
www.fara-africa.org/our-projects/unibrain
FARA
Prof Monty Jones, Executive
Director
mjones@fara-africa.org
Dr Irene Annor-Frempong,
Director, Capacity Strengthening
ifrempong@fara-africa.org
www.fara-africa.org
ANAFE
Dr Aissétou Dramé Yayé
Executive Secretary
a.yaye@cgiar.org
www.anafeafrica.org
PanAAC
Mrs Lucy Muchoki, Chief
Executive Officer
ceo@panaac.org,
lmuchoki@panaac.org
www.panaac.org
AIP at ICRISAT
Dr Kiran Sharma
Chief Executive Officer
k.sharma@cgiar.org,
www.abiicrisat.org
ASARECA
Dr Joseph Methu
j.methu@asareca.org
www.asareca.org
CORAF/WECARD
Dr Sidi Sanyang
sidi.sanyang@coraf.org
www.coraf.org
CCARDESA
Dr Keoagile Molapong
mnyirenda@sadc.int
www.sadc.int/fanr