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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the perceptions of young agricultural entrepreneurs (agripreneurs, as a neologism, from now on), to understand what they consider as determinants in achieving entrepreneurial success in accordance with their type of farming.

This study uses primary data collected through a questionnaire, among 222 young agripreneurs who are active in lowland, semi-mountainous and mountainous regions of western Greece.

The approach used provided a clear evidence that perceived characteristics, such as internal funding and level of education/training, have a significant relationship with the perception of young agripreneurs’ success (YAS). Also, the perception of young agripreneurs for success varies by the type of farming. Crop production agripreneurs have a significantly higher need for participation in Producer Groups than in livestock production ones. Alternatively, gender, presents a significant relationship only with livestock production agripreneurs’ success.

The results of this study could help to design appropriate policy instruments and at the same time, promote and foster entrepreneurship on the one hand and provide suggestions for young agripreneurs to create sustainable new ventures on the other hand.

This study is original and valuable in the sense that provides the practical implications for understanding the entrepreneurial success and sustainability in a very critical segment of the agricultural sector.

The agribusiness ecosystem in Africa is shaped by a myriad of complex and interwoven issues. Navigating these complexities and growing sustainable businesses with high social impact value is usually the outcome of a sustained effort to succeed. The knowledge of the African business context, the ability to identify opportunities and the willingness to learn from experience constitute a veritable means for any entrepreneur seeking to scale up an Indigenous agribusiness in Africa. This chapter presents JR Farms as a case study of one of such Indigenous agribusinesses that has successfully expanded within the African market. The case examines the trajectory of JR Farms from its beginnings in Nigeria to its definitive establishment in Rwanda and Zambia. Through the lens of a qualitative case study approach, we write a narrative of the vision, strategies and decisions that transformed JR Farms into a multi-million-dollar development partner for the communities where it operates. Finally, we reflect on these experiences in making recommendations for growing agribusinesses in Africa.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This viewpoint paper concentrates on promoting and investing in the training and development of agripreneurs as a way to economically stimulate Nigeria’s growth out of recession, by using the large mass of unused land in the country to boost GDP. Currently, unenthusiastic social attitudes within the country toward agriculture as a career choice are a challenge to overcome in bringing this economic reinvention strategy to life in Nigeria.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists, and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This chapter illuminates why and how a group of local social entrepreneurs improved farmers’ living conditions and contributed to the preservation of Kerinci Seblat National Park (KSNP) through sustainable coffee farming. KSNP is the largest national park on the Island of Sumatra and is a UNESCO world heritage site. However, since 2011, it has been listed as a “World Heritage in Danger” due to illegal logging, encroachment, and poaching of KSNP land. To save KSNP and improve the living conditions of the people around the national park, a group of local social entrepreneurs gathered in 2014 and devised a vision of “preserving the nature by empowering the community” by establishing Koperasi Alam Kopi Kerinci (ALKO cooperatives). The cooperative started to recruit seasoned farmers and younger people who wanted to become agripreneurs. The coffee supply chain was strengthened by educating farmers about good farming practices and coffee traceability technology, so Kerinci coffee could compete in the export market. After seven years of collaborative work, by early 2021, the initiative empowered 516 farmers who cultivated 410 hectares of coffee plantations in 24 villages with a total production of 350 tons of Arabica specialty Kerinci coffee. Ninety-five per cent of coffee productions were exported with premium prices to Belgium, Norway, France, the Netherlands, England, New Zealand, the USA, China, Malaysia, and Singapore. Farmers started to enjoy the fruit of their hard work. Some illegal loggers stopped poaching KSNP and started to plant coffee outside KSNP. The endeavor to preserve the nature and empower the community has started to show good results.

This article aims to develop a measurement scale for assessing agripreneurial competencies relevant to emerging economies in alignment with the SDG2 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030.

The scale development procedure includes item development and refinement, data collection, reliability and validity tests and scale purification with exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The validated scale carries eight dimensions of competencies: Agreeableness (AG), Technological Competency (TC), Competitive Spirit (CS), Innovativeness (IN), Self-Confidence (SC), Social Responsibility (SR), Conscientiousness (CO) and Leadership (LS). The analysis puts forth a good and fit model, and the new scale reports sufficient convergent and discriminant validity.

This study is focused on the agripreneurial competencies of individual agripreneurs; institutional agripreneurs are excluded from the study.

Identifying prominent agripreneurs using the scale developed from this study will aid in allocating various government and non-governmental organisations' assistance to agripreneurs. Since developing economies rely heavily on agriculture, any positive contribution can help alleviate poor economic growth, end hunger, and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG 2 of 2030).

Though several scales for measuring entrepreneurial competencies are available, there is no standard scale to measure agripreneurial competencies. This article presents the development and validation of a measurement scale to assess the major competencies of agripreneurs that influence agripreneurship performance.

This paper aims to investigate the entrepreneurial behaviours exhibited by commercial smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, focusing on their socio-economic characteristics, and considers their implication for outcomes of livelihood resilience in a resource-constrained and turbulent rural context.

The study used survey data collected from 430 smallholder farmers in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. Using a two-step cluster analysis, the study constructed a typology of farmers based on their entrepreneurial behaviour and socio-economic characteristics.

The results revealed that commercial smallholder farmers are heterogeneous in terms of their entrepreneurial behaviours. Four clusters were identified: non-entrepreneurial, goal-driven, means-driven and ambidextrous. Beyond their entrepreneurial behaviours, these clusters significantly differ in the socio-economic characterises (gender, age, education levels, farm size, proximity to the market and social connection) and farm performance (seasonal sales per hectare and farm income per hectare).

The typology framework relating farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours to their socio-economic characteristics and business performance is important to tailor and therefore improve the effectiveness of farmer entrepreneurship programmes and policies. In particular, tailoring farmer entrepreneurship education is crucial to distribute land, finance and market resources in purposive ways to promote a combination of smallholder farmers’ effectual and causal behaviours at an early stage of their farm ventures.

Researchers still know little about which farmers’ behaviours are entrepreneurial and how these behaviours manifest in action during their commercial farm activities. This research leverages effectuation and causation theory to unveil previously overlooked distinctions on farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours, thereby enhancing a more grounded understanding of farmer entrepreneurship in a resource-constrained context.

This study aims to investigate the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) investment on the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) profitability in the Indian context.

This study used a framework based on the ICT investment and firm size, measuring the impact on profit before depreciation, interest, tax and amortisation of MSME by taking a random sampling of 300 Indian MSME manufacturing firm’s secondary data from the Prowess database. This framework was analysed using the design of experiment (DoE) technique.

The study showed that ICT investment has a significant positive relationship with profitability. This study examines the different ICT investment levels to predict investment strategies and fine-tune profit targets. The critical finding is that ICT investment maximises profit at one million rupees. This discovery aids MSME leaders’ sustainable business decision-making.

This study has an explicit limit to the Indian context, where the firm requirements of countries are different, and these findings need to be validated with many operating variables and applied to more firms with more data. Even so, as a theoretical implication, this study took a novel approach to ICT adoption (through ICT investment) in the Indian MSME sector with guiding levels of ICT investment for each type of firm (i.e. micro, small and medium). This study opens new avenues for investigating researchers and stakeholders by exploring other factors responsible for ICT adoption.

This study uniquely provides practitioners with the functional level of ICT investment for MSMEs in the Indian context. These finding guides top management to make strategic ICT adoption decisions with information symmetry. At the same time, these findings suggest financial institutions astern their credit programme to provide credit for ICT investment in MSMEs.

This study highlights the value of ICT as a practical resource for business owners that significantly makes MSMEs more informed and profitable, thus creating more jobs and incrementing the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

This study offers unique empirical findings on how decision makers in MSMEs maximise profits through optimal ICT investment levels depending upon the firm size in an emerging economy like India. There is evidence in the study to conclude that ICT is a need of MSME and has implications for firm performance.

Agriculture, since time immemorial, has been a major sector in reducing poverty, accelerating economic activities and source of sustainability of a nation. As most of the youth in the 21st century are targeting the youth's career in the non-agricultural sector, attracting and involving the youths in agribusinesses is the need of the hour. In this regard, the research tries to understand the awareness and involvement of youth farmers in agripreneurship in Western Nepal.

Using a structured questionnaire, data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. On the basis of descriptive and inferential analysis, the ordered logit model is employed in the study. The research is based on explanatory research design through identifying farmers' awareness of agriculture entrepreneurship from 324 farmers of Bedkot Municipality, Kanchanpur, Nepal.

Study findings have shown that agricultural knowledge with overall awareness is statistically significant. Ordered logistic regression indicated that sex has somehow influenced technical and entrepreneur skills while agriculture information highly influenced education and training. The result shows that agricultural training is still the requirement of one-fourth of the farmers, whereas another quarter of farmers need subsidies.

The study suggests that in order to enhance awareness, training, subsidy, market management and development program are widely needed. In the backdrop of declining agro-products and food security challenges, the study targets to offer an understanding to policymakers and stakeholders on addressing the dire need of agripreneurship among the youths around the world.

The study summarizes the state of knowledge of agripreneurship of Nepalese farmers, identifies emerging issues and policy implications and priorities for future applied research.

The unavailability and inadequate use of cashew seedlings for propagation are part of the challenges facing the cashew sub-sector in Ghana. However, promoting investment into cashew seedling production should be based on the analysis of the profitability and viability of such a venture as well as the respective determinants of farmers' demand for the planting material.

This study used gross margin/contribution, net margin and contribution ratios to analyse the profitability of cashew seedling production under four different business models. Also, the determinants of choice of planting material for cashew plantation among farmers was analysed via a multinomial probit regression.

The study revealed that cashew seedling production is profitable with a gross margin of $8,474, $2,242, $1,616 and $1,797 and contribution to sales of 31–53% for the various business models. The positive determinants of the use of cashew seedlings were off-farm job participation and extension contact, whereas farm size and age of plantation negatively influenced the use of seedlings. Land acquisition method also influenced the use of both seedlings and seeds negatively.

The findings provide empirical evidence of the viability and profitability of cashew seedling production as a viable business venture and off-farm opportunity in rural areas. The information from the study will help major stakeholders in cashew production to understand the type of farmers who use seeds and seedlings as well as the reasons for using or otherwise.

Significant research in the cashew value chain had focussed on the profitability of cashew plantation with little literature on profitability and viability analysis of cashew seedling production. Similarly, this study provides a significant value chain job opportunity as well as literature on the choice of cashew seedlings among current and prospective end-users.

At the end of the case discussion, the students should be able to: evaluate the factors influencing entrepreneurship in an African context; discuss the relevance of developmental entrepreneurship in an African context; assess an enabling environment and ecosystem for stimulating entrepreneurship; analyse and resolve practical issues in starting a business under challenging conditions; understand how accelerator programmes work in an African context; appreciate how partnerships can be leveraged to foster entrepreneurship; evaluate relevant business models and their challenges to grow enterprises; and understand the social entrepreneurship journey of a founder.

In March 2019, Elena Gaffurini, managing partner of DEV Mozambique (DEV), sat down to evaluate the business. DEV, based in Maputo and launched in 2015, was a consulting and services company supporting entrepreneurial development in Mozambique, by training and supporting small businesses in agricultural-related sectors to improve food security. Gaffurini – a self-proclaimed purpose-driven person – now questioned whether DEV’s impact on social and economic development was significant enough to justify the effort she and her team put into it and whether DEV should reconsider its current business model to create more impact.

Postgraduate: MBA and Executive Education.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.