Development of Farmer Investment School Training Concept

The FIS (Farmer Investment School) aims at training emergent farmers, farmer-based organizations (FBO)/cooperatives and rural agri-based MSMEs to improve their business skills and capacities to plan and execute profitable and productivity enhancing investments. Target groups of the training shall already have acquired a basic knowledge on short-term economic planning. The FIS concept therefore builds on existing training concepts (e.g. Farmer Business School, BUS, CEFE). The developed trainings will, to a lesser extent, also be used for the training and/or coaching of financial institutions (banks, microfinance institutions, savings and credit cooperatives, providers of digital payment services) to enable them to understand farm businesses and their investment behaviour.

The project comprises the development of a training concept, training material and the implementation of pilot trainings in Benin and Zambia. Furthermore, the project develops a training of trainer (ToT) course, develops its material and conducts pilot ToTs. To ensure a sustainable roll-out, a strategy for a cost-effective training delivery and monitoring (including potential ICT measures), as well as a concept for a post-training coaching concept shall be developed.

The aims will be achieved by :

• Review of existing training material and training concepts
• Assessment and prioritization of specific training needs in target countries
• Development of an overall farmer investment school training program concept
• Development of comprehensive training materials and didactical concept for pilot modules
• Implementation of pilot trainings on training modules in the partner countries of Benin and Zambia
• Development of a FIS ‘training of trainers’ (ToT) module and conduct one ToT each in Benin and Zambia
• Implementation of pilot ToT
• Supervision of ToT trained trainers
• Formulation of an implementation and roll-out strategy to other countries