Community of Practice on Agroecology Entrepreneurship in East Africa

Community of Practice on Agroecology Entrepreneurship in East Africa

Agroecological Entrepreneurship is growing in East Africa as one of the ways of promoting agroecology – many entrepreneurs are starting and looking to grow businesses that enable farmers to practice agroecology. 

Many entities including funders, investors and BDS providers are also gaining an interest in enabling these agroecological entrepreneurs to build successful businesses, but there is still a lot to learn, and many are learning independently.

Some of the questions encountered include: 

• How to measure the impact of an Agroecological Enterprise; How to build a successful agroecology enterprise business model; 
• The journey of growth of an agroecological enterprise; 
• How enterprises can support the transition to Agroecology (their own and those of farmers); 
• How to structure an Agroecological Enterprise to successfully support agroecology farmers; 
• How to structure investment into an Agroecological enterprise; and many others.

The Neycha Accelerator & Fund, has interacted with multiple players in Agroecological Entrepreneurship, It is an opportunity to amplify and accelerate learning in Agroecological Entrepreneurship by bringing heads and resources together under one umbrella, to build common knowledge, insights, materials and tools around Agroecological Entrepreneurship, in turn accelerating East Africa’s transition towards Agroecology. 

The Neycha Accelerator & Fund (Neycha) is a joint initiative of Biovision and SHONA combining both expertise in agroecology (Biovision) and business advisory (SHONA) to identify and support AEEs to grow their impact in East Africa. Our mission is to advance food system innovators and entrepreneurs who are working toward a more regenerative and agroecological food production and contributing to a more holistic and circular agrifood economy in East Africa.

Key Publications

Neycha Accelerator & Fund, (2024) A Market Study of Agroecology Enterprises in Kenya and Uganda, #32 pp

Agroecological Enterprises have a clear agroecological passion, impact and vision. They could be operating anywhere along the agriculture value chain (see below) and are supporting farmers to transition to agroecology or are promoting and operating in line with the 13 Principles of Agroecology, including:

• Organic input supply and pre-production support for farmers practising agroecology.
• Entrepreneurial farms practising agroecology beyond a single farm.
• Purchasing, trading and marketing agroecological produce.
• Processing agroecological produce.
• Retailing agroecological produce and products e.g supermarkets, other types of markets.
• Promoting consumption of agroecological produce and products e.g restaurants, hotels, etc.