Innovative learning and co-creation of teaching methodology for scaling entrepreneurship in food and agribusiness in Sub-Saharan Africa

Kenya, Uganda and Zambia have serious challenges in utilizing the agro-sector jobs and wealth creation potential in national development. The reason for this is that the agro-graduates are not equipped with work-life relevant competences because they are not trained with modern pedagogical methods. Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a powerful way to educate students in systems thinking and to equip them with 21st century relevant competences. Most agricultural Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) do not offer PBL based courses. HEI staff are not trained in using student-centered methods, and university-industry cooperation is weak. European HEIs, such as HAMK, Aalto and UNIPV do research and apply sustainable education approaches for global development. In the AgriSCALE project, the EU HEIs aim to develop a contextualized PBL education method appropriate in SSA. The project addresses the strategic bottleneck of the HEIs to equip graduates with an entrepreneurial mindset and competences to solve complex development challenges in the agro-sector. The project cooperation is based on PBL methodology development, the training of teaching staff on PBL methods and tools, and joint piloting of PBL cases in cooperation with the student teams involved. The objective is to establish PBL into the agro-entrepreneur curricula of the partner HEIs in KE, UG and ZM. EU HEIs bring their PBL expertise to the project and all HEIs contribute to student field challenges; Aalto facilitates PBL learning in real-life contexts; Aalto and HAMK co-lead competence-based quality assurance; UNIPV develops the PBL expert teachers network and Best Practice PBL Manual for dissemination to SSA; and HAMK in the overall management and research-based PBL methodology development. At the end of the project, the six participating HEIs will continue the PBL entrepreneurship courses.