Smartpreneur partnered with CLI College, a career learning institute to train over 300 participants in its webinar series held on the 17th of April 2021.
The first Smartpreneur webinar themed “AGRIBUSINESS: Understandidng The Trends and Opportunities” featured agripreneurs and experts of the Agricultural sector like; Adama J. Adama, CEO FARM4ME, Mr Akinwale Alabi who is the author and co-founder of Corporate farmers international, Ambassador Sam Afolabi, the CEO Eatrich farms as well as Mrs. Edobong Akpabio the CEO of Visionage Agrotech Farms. The event was hosted by the renowned presenter and business analyst, Frank Fagbo.
The event kicked off with the hosts introductory message where he informed participants of how the program was to run. Shortly after, the speakers were introduced and the program began.
The webinar began with Mr. Akin Alabi speaking on Agriculture in Nigeria; illustrating a detailed short story on the Agro space in the country and giving an overview of agribusiness alongside the benefits of being an Agropreneur in Nigeria. The speaker gave simple facts about Agribusiness, with a key fact being that agriculture is the only sector that can create jobs for millions of youths anywhere in the world.
Mr Alabi gave various reasons why Nigerian youths should be involved in Agribusiness, like the fact that Agriculture matters to the future of development of the Nation and that it can be a great source of employment
The next speaker, Ambassador Sam Afolabi, spoke on ‘The cost of financing and sustaining an agri-business and how farmers can access Agri-loans”.
Speaking on the mentality needed in venturing into the Agri-business sector, one must have the following:
- Zeal– It takes processes to make money from agriculture unlike other buying and selling businesses, it takes time. There is a time to plant, time to weed, a time to water, a time to harvest, before you think of sales and profit.
- A technical partner-A technical partner is needed to handle the day-to-day activities on the farm. Farming requires a lot of technical know-how. The success of the farm relies greatly on the farmer knowing seasons.
- A financial partner– Finance is the blood of a business, and we all know what happens when blood is short.
The different sources of financing an agri-business such as: Bank of industry, Bank of agriculture, Crowd funding, personal savings, commercial banks and inheritance were listed.
The third speaker, Mr Adama J. Adama, spoke lengthily on building the next generation Agribusiness infrastructure. Agro investments with a structured and trustworthy framework will attract investments from within and outside Nigeria.
The final speaker of the webinar was Mrs. Edobong Akpabio. The discussions rounded up with Mrs Akpabio shedding light on risk management in Agri-business. The topics touched on were: production risks, Marketing risks, Financial risks, Human Risks and Institutional risks. Mrs Akpabio mentioned that a successful agropreneur should be able to identify the risks likely to be faced; understanding the potential impacts and likelihood of undesirable outcomes and identifying and taking possible steps to mitigate or lessen the impacts. She explained further by saying that no one person can understand all the areas of risk faced by a business and ended the webinar by advising agropreneurs to get help from risk management cooperatives, lawyers, bankers and insurance agents, etc.
The webinar was wrapped up with questions from participants, and a final closing remark from the host. All in all, the programme was very educative and informative, and ran smoothly.
