The Magwi Agribusiness College, an affiliated college of the University of Juba, launched an inclusive agribusiness club on Thursday.
The agribusiness club aims to link actors in the value chain, including academia, to build the capacity of the actors in agribusiness, including input dealers, producers, processors, and transporters.
Speaking to Radio Tamazuj during the launch of the project at the University of Juba, Wani William, Executive Director of Magwi College of Agribusiness and Management Sciences, said the club is a new approach in South Sudan aimed at linking all the value chain actors to come as a club so that the producers, input dealers, processors have a club where they discuss the achievements, challenges and what should be done in South Sudan.
“This formation of the club will give easy role, first of all, we want these people to come in groups so that when the farmers produce the food, the processer has to link the transporter to transport the food items from the producer to the processing company,” he said.
“The middlemen and the whole sellers also need to be linked to the producers so that instead of just going to anybody. First of all, they come to this club, those who want to buy the produce comes through the club, they get the linkage through the club and as the institution will also link this club to the market from the counties to the state,” he added.
Wani pointed out that they are targeting the green belt zone where production occurs and the city where most of the processing occurs.
Meanwhile, Alana Sebit Owot, Country Team Leader for 2 Scale South Sudan, said they are building a network of actors working in the value chain, including financial institutions, seed companies, agro-input dealers, and transporters.
He said the inclusive agribusiness club is an initiative from 2 Scale, a program funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs piloting business ideas in South Sudan.
“So these ideas of inclusive agribusiness club will empower the farmers to ensure that they have access to all the facilities that they require whether be it input, transport services, and tractor hire services because the club will involve all different actors to have a complete value chain system to work,” he explained.
For her part, Mary Benjamin Loki, Director General for Food Reserves in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, lauded the initiative, saying it will significantly benefit the agribusiness sector in many ways.
“This initiative is excellent because it will be the first agribusiness club. We have had agribusiness people ever since from various aspects, but it was not organized; every person plays their role alone, and not everybody is involved. The youths are supposed to be involved in agribusiness, but because of the lack of proper organization or direction to them, they tend to behave incorrectly by becoming criminals simply because we have not organized them properly,” she concluded.