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AgriConnect Supports KNUST E-Learning Week 2024… Launches Agribusiness & Entrepreneurship Podcast and Two Masterclasses in Digital Literacy

The AgriConnect Team, Faculty of KNUST and the more than 100 students that attended the AgriConnect Session

The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) invited AgriConnect to participate in its E-Learning Week 2024. On Tuesday 9th July, the AgriConnect Team led two learning sessions under the theme “AgriConnect… digitally empowering our youth to lead the modernization of agriculture in Ghana’. 

AgriConnect took the opportunity to launch its 4-part podcast focused on Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship. This podcast forms part of the AgriConnect supplemental course on Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship. The Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship podcast is designed around the 4 modules of the course as follows:

AgriConnect Girls in ICT Day 2024 Webinar held under the theme “EmpowHering Leadership in the Digitalization of the Agriculture Sector”

On April 25, over 200 young women participated in AgriConnect’s webinar titled “EmpowHering Leadership in the Digitalization of the Agriculture Sector” - a Girls in ICT Day 2024 event.  These young women participated online via Zoom, while some of AgriConnect’s participating institutions hosted events in their lecture rooms, computer labs to allow their students to join the webinar as a group. 

The main objectives of the webinar were to allow young women who are participating in AgriConnect to:

Testimonials

AgriConnect has helped me a lot. When I got to Level 400, I was wondering how I would get a laptop to do my project work. Because of the actual costs of laptops, it would not have been easy to for me to get one. Fortunately, AgriConnect popped up. When I heard about AgriConnect, I said, “wow, this is a big opportunity for me”. I also did not have access on how to use a laptop and internet etc. and the courses, I think my knowledge and work has improved. I have been using the laptop to do my project work and that has helped me a lot. “Without AgriConnect, I do not know what I would have done”.

I was selling rice in the market for four years to help send my sisters to school. One day I started to look at food and said that without food you cannot survive. I went to my mother and told her I want to study food as it is important for human survival, and I want to know more about food. Where I am coming from there is no internet access and I never had a laptop and so it was difficult for me to type, and I learned how to do this through the course.

My father did not go to school. He is a farmer, so when I wanted to go to school, and I told him I wanted to study agriculture, he said, I am a farmer, what have I gotten from the farm. He said I sent you to school to come out of the farm, you want to farm to do what. But I said, farming is my passion! As of now, anytime my father is going to the farm, he wants to engage me, asking what I have learnt, and I have been advising him and now he is getting more yield, and he is very happy with my studies.

When I heard about AgriConnect, I did not hesitate at all became with a laptop going for 862 Cedi – that is so cheap, given the price of laptops. I needed to know the benefit of buying the laptop. The courses have helped me. The new technologies in agriculture, for example – such as drones. I want a drone. 

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AgriConnect Innovation and Difference

AgriConnect promises: 

  • That the technology deployed and the capacity built through the supplemental course content related to value chain development, digital literacy and entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector will drive the impact, scale and interest of youth, women, and differently-abled persons in the agriculture sector, and importantly bridge the digital divide. 

  • To address the urgent need to reduce the extent of labour under-utilisation among youth. 

  • To place focus on education and training to enable youth in agriculture to benefit from new and emerging opportunities in agriculture. The knowledge products that are being designed and disseminated through the devices will be innovative, culturally relevant, and fully aligned with the needs of the labour market and importantly capture the interest and imagination of youth in Ghana. 

  • That the activities and outputs of the Programme will in the near future support the modernization of the agriculture sector by boosting productivity and supporting the development of agribusiness, thereby creating the linkages between farms and plots and other economic activities such as manufacturing and agro-processing. 

  • To be innovative in its approach as the Programme is designed to bring scale and impact by allowing youth, women and differently-abled persons to align their educational qualifications in agribusiness, digital skills and value chain development with dignified and meaningful jobs that will allow them to maximise the potential of their entrepreneurial spirits towards improved and sustainable livelihoods.