Modernization of Agri-education through Competency Based Education in Ghana and Cameroon
The need for modernization for Agri-based education was a motivation for the project Climate-smart Agropreneurship Education for Jobs and Sustainability in Western Africa (AgrBIZZ). African universities are under persistent pressure from national governments to demonstrate their relevance by going beyond the traditional roles of teaching, research, and outreach to a greater role of community engagement, innovation, and industry.
The overall objective of AgrBIZZ is to contribute to Ghanas’ and Cameroons’ national development through social development by increasing the employability and entrepreneurial mindset of the graduates. For Häme University of Applied Sciences, through this project, we hope to deepen our competences to modernize our learning solutions which will contribute to sustainable growth and wellbeing locally and internationally.
This is the first this kind of project in Western Africa. As a consortium we hope to reach this objective through revised climate-smart, competence-based agri-entrepreneurship curricula. We are widening our networks for more cooperation. Most importantly we hope to deepen our competences to modernize the education to bring in student-centered teaching and learning practices, and capacitating teaching staff and university management to support competence-based education. The training is implemented by HAMK and University of Copenhagen.
Additionally, we are creating a collaborative learning ecosystem with academia and industry or societal partners which will continue to contribute to students’ continued benefits from the problem-based learning methods after the project ends. The ecosystem will strengthen higher education institutions’ capacity to further contextualize and develop curricula, pedagogical methodology and learning ecosystems through national and international partnerships. The launch event in May connected stakeholders of the project from diverse countries to create awareness of the activities and the objectives.
The project is implemented through training partner institutions on climate smart agriculture and problem-based learning methodologies and agri-entrepreneurship. Concretely, there is being online and face-to-face training of staff members and students where they get to use problem-based learning and climate smart agriculture learning materials and assignments. In partner institutions we will create new curricula, and revise existing curricula to be work life responsive. Also partnerships will be built or strengthened with industry and societal stakeholders. These actions will support the cooperation between industry and academia to improve students’ learning.
The project is coordinated by HAMK and the partner Institutions are the University of Bamenda, University of Buea, University of Cape Coast, University for development studies, RUFORUM and University of Copenhagen.
The project is co-funded by the European Union Erasmus+/EACEA.
Overview:
Name: Climate-smart Agropreneurship Education for Jobs and Sustainability in Western Africa (AgrBIZZ)
Funding: Erasmus+ CBHE
Duration: 1 November 2024–31 October 2027
Budget: 888 916 €
Partners: Cameroon: University of Bamenda, University of Buea
Ghana: University of Cape Coast, University for Development Studies
Uganda: Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM)
Denmark: University of Copenhagen
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