O-Farms for Entrepreneur Support Organisation
O-Farms is an African SME accelerator completely focused on circular agribusiness with the goal of making circularity a mainstream approach for improved rural livelihoods and sustainability. It is an initiative funded by the IKEA Foundation to help scale circular agribusiness innovations in East Africa.
O-Farms, led by Bopinc and Village Capital, is focused on accelerating the next generation of innovative circular agribusinesses in Ethiopia and Kenya. Agri-circularity creates a more sustainable food system that drives innovation through developing innovative business models that reduce agricultural losses thereby creating new economic opportunities and jobs in the region. In this regard, Kenya is able to sustainably feed its growing population, without depleting the natural resources. In doing so, O-Farms will build innovation support infrastructure that enables circular agribusiness to grow and develop.
The project will start with a training component, by Ikea Foundation, to the team of the E4Impact Acceleration Program in Nairobi, about Circular Economy in Agribusiness. Such training will enable us to accelerate 2 cohorts of 10 Circular Enterprises in the Agribusiness sector, in 2-year time. Furthermore, we will manage a dedicated fund to provide grants for the scale-up of these Enterprises.
The enterprises can expect to receive the following benefits:
- Customized training program on agri-circularity business
- Technical Assistance to embed circularity principles in the business model including strengthening the systems and processes.
- Coaching and Mentorship – personalized and group coaching to unpack training into business implementation
- Links to financial and investment opportunities
- Networking and peer learning to strengthen innovations and build a community of best practices in agri-circularity.
- Competitive peer-to-peer awarded seed grants of up to Euro 50,000 (for 2 cohort selected enterprises)
- Networking opportunities to showcase a solution and meet with investors and other stakeholders.
