NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) - AGRAhas begun acceptingnominations for the 2022 Women Agripreneur of the Year Awards (WAYA), which recognizes female entrepreneurs excelling in different segments of the agricultural value chain.
To qualify, entrepreneurs need to have an innovative product or service in the agriculture value chain with evidence of impact on their communities and countries. Submissions are being received on the WAYA website until May 31 in three categories: young female agripreneur; outstanding value-adding enterprise and female Ag tech innovator. Winners will be announced at the AGRF Summit 2022, slated for 5-7September in Kigali, each receiving a cash prize of USD20,000.
AGRA’s President, Dr. Agnes Kalibata notedthat the WAYA programmeis part of the VALUE4HER initiative that aims to address constraints faced by women in accessing productive resources and business opportunities.
“Women provide up to 50% of agricultural labour force, contribute up to 70% of food production, and account for 80% of food processors.They represent a crucial resource in agriculture and the rural economy through their roles as farmers, laborers, and entrepreneurs. However, they are faced with constraints limiting their full participation. AGRA’s interventions through the VALUE4HER initiativesare strengthening women’s agribusiness enterprises and increasing voice and urgency across Africa,” Dr Kalibata added.
The VALUE4HERprogram is focused on increasing the performance of women agripreneurs by facilitating access to markets and trade, finance, and investments, as well as opportunities for tailored online and offline matchmaking activities, learning, networking, and global advocacy.
The 2021 WAYA inaugural award celebrated Dr.HajiaSalamatu the Founder and Executive Director of WOFAN in Nigeria, Beatrice NkathaMmunyi the Founder and MD of Sorghum Pioneer Agencies in Kenya and Linda Kudakwashe Manyezathe Founding Director of Food Masters South Africa.
Building on lessons from engaging with women agriprenuers across the continent, AGRA seeks to encourage countries to invest strategically in women’s development, strengthening the private sector enabling environment, and building evidence-based participatory processes that will advance inclusive and sustainable agriculture-led growth, resilience, and nutrition.
The VALUE4HER initiative presents an opportunity to deliver inclusive economic growth, jobs, and health to the African continent by supporting women agriprenuers across the continent.
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (PAMACC News)- African Forestry sector stakeholders say they have now been empowered to stand to the challenge climate finance opportunities up for grabs.
They expressed satisfaction and their readiness after a one week training workshop in Douala, Cameroon March 14-18, 2022 organized by the African Forest Forum, AFF in collaboration with Global Forest Financing Facilitation Network - GFFFN).
Rosine Bayogo, technical director, Timberland Industries, Central African Republic says knowledge acquired will help her improve in climate change project drafting in her organization.
“Climate finance is a challenging task requiring some technical details. The workshop had permitted me sharpen my knowhow on some of the salient details in project drafting for funding,” Rosine said.
The same optimism was shared by Tabita Radian of Ivory Coast, who lauded the initiative by African Forest Forum to train forest stakeholders.
“Training of forest stakeholders is the best way to ensure not only forest governance but also providing the opportunity to better access finance. I am elated because the resource persons we had showed great knowledge on the issues and we are all going back very satisfied,” Tabita said.
Knowledge acquired ranged from project drafting strategies, sources of finance[domestic, regional, international] and the intricacies involved, Models of financing, risqué involved, networking and partnership etc.
Climate finance experts say Climate change presents a US$3 trillion investment opportunity up for grabs in Africa by 2030 with the private sector expected to lead in driving green investment and development.
According to Barbara Buchner, the Executive Director for Climate Finance Program at Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) , Climate change stakeholders should mobilize and work in synergy to stand the chance of grabbing the available funding opportunities.
Even though opportunities exist to finance climate change projects, African countries still find it hard accessing climate funding.
One of the key reasons according to experts is that stakeholders in the forest sector don’t fully master what funding opportunities exist, and how to draft bankable projects to attract such funding.
“African Forest stakeholders have to be abreast with the different funding opportunities and also be empowered with skills on drafting bankable project,” says Peter Gondo of the UNFF Secretariat.
AFF says they are committed to pushing their drive to better empower forest stakeholders in this regard.
“Training is one of the key roles and objective of AFF and we committed to working with all the forest stakeholders in the continent. Just we are training now in Francophone Africa, so is another scheduled for English speaking African countries in the weeks ahead,” says
Dr Marie Louise Avana-Tientcheu, of AFF.
The participants, drawn from governmental / forest administration and non-governmental organizations (and this includes the private sector) have come from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Togo
The papers presented by the different resource persons, Peter Gondo, Larwanou Mahamane, Kouassigan Tovivo all highlighted globally the multiple climate funding opportunities and institutions as well as the elements potential project proposals need to address to be able to attract funding.
The African Forest Forum (AFF) is a pan-African non-governmental organization with its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. It is an association of individuals who share the quest for and commitment to the sustainable management, use and conservation of the forest and tree resources of Africa for the socio- economic wellbeing of its people and for the stability and improvement of its environment. The purpose of AFF is to provide a platform and create an enabling environment for independent and objective analysis, advocacy and advice on relevant policy and technical issues pertaining to achieving sustainable management, use and conservation of Africa’s forest and tree resources as part of efforts to reduce poverty, promote gender equality, economic and social development and protect the environment.
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (PAMACC News)- African Forestry sector stakeholders say they have now been empowered to stand to the challenge climate finance opportunities up for grabs.
They expressed satisfaction and their readiness after a one week training workshop in Douala, Cameroon March 14-18, 2022 organized by the African Forest Forum, AFF in collaboration with Global Forest Financing Facilitation Network - GFFFN).
Rosine Bayogo, technical director, Timberland Industries, Central African Republic says knowledge acquired will help her improve in climate change project drafting in her organization.
“Climate finance is a challenging task requiring some technical details. The workshop had permitted me sharpen my knowhow on some of the salient details in project drafting for funding,” Rosine said.
The same optimism was shared by Tabita Radian of Ivory Coast, who lauded the initiative by African Forest Forum to train forest stakeholders.
“Training of forest stakeholders is the best way to ensure not only forest governance but also providing the opportunity to better access finance. I am elated because the resource persons we had showed great knowledge on the issues and we are all going back very satisfied,” Tabita said.
Knowledge acquired ranged from project drafting strategies, sources of finance[domestic, regional, international] and the intricacies involved, Models of financing, risqué involved, networking and partnership etc.
Climate finance experts say Climate change presents a US$3 trillion investment opportunity up for grabs in Africa by 2030 with the private sector expected to lead in driving green investment and development.
According to Barbara Buchner, the Executive Director for Climate Finance Program at Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) , Climate change stakeholders should mobilize and work in synergy to stand the chance of grabbing the available funding opportunities.
Even though opportunities exist to finance climate change projects, African countries still find it hard accessing climate funding.
One of the key reasons according to experts is that stakeholders in the forest sector don’t fully master what funding opportunities exist, and how to draft bankable projects to attract such funding.
“African Forest stakeholders have to be abreast with the different funding opportunities and also be empowered with skills on drafting bankable project,” says Peter Gondo of the UNFF Secretariat.
AFF says they are committed to pushing their drive to better empower forest stakeholders in this regard.
“Training is one of the key roles and objective of AFF and we committed to working with all the forest stakeholders in the continent. Just we are training now in Francophone Africa, so is another scheduled for English speaking African countries in the weeks ahead,” says
Dr Marie Louise Avana-Tientcheu, of AFF.
The participants, drawn from governmental / forest administration and non-governmental organizations (and this includes the private sector) have come from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Togo
The papers presented by the different resource persons, Peter Gondo, Larwanou Mahamane, Kouassigan Tovivo all highlighted globally the multiple climate funding opportunities and institutions as well as the elements potential project proposals need to address to be able to attract funding.
The African Forest Forum (AFF) is a pan-African non-governmental organization with its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. It is an association of individuals who share the quest for and commitment to the sustainable management, use and conservation of the forest and tree resources of Africa for the socio- economic wellbeing of its people and for the stability and improvement of its environment. The purpose of AFF is to provide a platform and create an enabling environment for independent and objective analysis, advocacy and advice on relevant policy and technical issues pertaining to achieving sustainable management, use and conservation of Africa’s forest and tree resources as part of efforts to reduce poverty, promote gender equality, economic and social development and protect the environment.
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (PAMACC News) - The training of forest stakeholders in Francophone Africa on accessing climate financing took place in Douala-Cameroon March 14-18. Organized by African Forest Forum (AFF) with support from Global Forest Financing Facilitation Network – GFFFN the atraining was to empower actors with not only the skills of drafting bankable projects to attract climate funding but also get abreast with available opportunities and the intricacies involved. On the second day of the training , PAMACC Senior Reporter, Elias Ntungwe Ngalame caught up with AFF Senior Programme Officer, Dr Marie-Louise Avana Tientcheu for a chat. She says the one good thing about climate finance is that it compels stakeholders to work together.
Q- This is day two of the training workshop, what is your assessment of the deliberations so far?
I think deliberations have been going on very well. I have congratulated both the experts and participants, who have shown commitment and interest to learn, staying on till 9 pm that we completed the day one programme. The same enthusiasm has been seen in the second day of the workshop the deals with the funding opportunities, the adaptation fund etc. Participant now have knowledge of the available funding institutions like the World Bank,UN-REDD, LCDF( Fund for less developed countries, Multilateral Development Banks like AfDB, West African Bank, Green Climate Fund, GEF, Forest Carbon Partnership, European Union, USAID, GIZ and the types of projects they are interested in.
The third day will focus more on the practical aspect with group work so that participants are edified on not only on what goes into the content of a project but also how they can structure it to stand the chance of attracting funding.
Q - Climate Finance seem to be a challenging aspect to comprehend, do you think one week is enough to understand all what is involved?
Even one month may not be enough. What we are trying to do is give some basic knowledge. The information gathered here will only help them improve on what they already know and permit them carry out more research , gather more knowledge. They have to team up with other experts to improve on the quality of their project, A lot of expertise is needed when it comes to drafting projects. As the resource persons of these workshop have explain, stakeholders have to work in synergy with experts of the different sector.
As African Forest Forum have always advised, stakeholders from different sectors( water, energy, urban development, forestry ,livestock etc have to work in synergy, harmonize their different sector actions to stand the chance to succeed in getting funding. The good think with climate finance is that it helps to promote sector networking as partners are compelled to work with one another. Secondly we want to make sure the different stakeholders here seek to work one another even after they leave from here.
Q - Apart from such training are there other ways AFF is assisting forest stakeholders to facilitate their task to access funding?
AFF approach is about capacity building, providing the right tool for stakeholders to better manage forest. The purpose of AFF is to provide a platform and create an enabling environment for independent and objective analysis, advocacy and advice on relevant policy and technical issues pertaining to achieving sustainable management, use and conservation of Africa’s forest and tree resources as part of efforts to reduce poverty, promote gender equality, economic and social development and protect the environment.
4 - There is much talk about available carbon markets, how can African forest stakeholders benefit from this?
There are opportunities for African countries to participate in global carbon markets through forest conservation, through ,the agriculture sector etc. I think if African countries update their mastering of such fund mobilization together with effective carbon monitoring within forest and agriculture sector they will benefit a lot. But first they have to be trained so that they understand what the carbon market is all about and what opportunities are the available for them to benefit from.
That is part of the reason why the African Forest Forum has organized this capacity building workshop.
