The Department of Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness and Extension (DAEAE) in collaboration with the Agribusiness Students Association of Ghana, UENR Chapter has launched a newsletter “The Agripreneur” .
The newsletter, being the first of its kind by the Department is to serve as an advocacy tool in agribusiness and its related fields, agricultural analysis and research ideas as well as to make the Department and the University visible to the global world. Again, the Agripreneur will contribute to the achievement of the mission and vision of the Department to become the prime leader in the provision of agribusiness, applied economics and community development education in Africa.
The Head of Department (HoD), Dr. Richard Kwasi Bannor in a brief speech explained the idea behind introducing the biannual newsletter. He said together with other Lecturers at the Department such as Miss Oppong-kyeremeh and Dr. William Quarmine the newsletter was introduced to create a medium of branding the Agribusiness programme offered in the University and update students on the opportunities available along the chain of agricultural commodities. “Agribusiness goes beyond farming as we see; let’s make students aware and ignite their entrepreneurial spirits so that they can start something or a business on their own no matter how small it may look like, it will expand with time” he entreated. Dr. Bannor encouraged the students present at the Department to embark on innovative activities such as creating website to broadcast daily reports on agricultural commodities and activities, which he termed “Agri-journalism”.
A Lecturer at the Department of Agribusiness, Dr. Nicholas Oppong Mensah explained that Agripreneurship was about entrepreneurship in agriculture or identifying the entrepreneurial opportunities in Agriculture. He added that change was needed for development in the 21st century where Agripreneurship was of much importance. “If you are capable of effecting that change in the agricultural sector, you are called Agripreneur” he stated.
The Editor-in-Chief of the newsletter, Miss Helena Oppong-Kyeremeh expressed her gratitude to all who made the publication of the long awaited newsletter possible. She mentioned that the newsletter entailed mainly the ideas on agriculture, research findings, updates on the activities of Agricultural and Agribusiness sectors and also to serve as a medium to help students of the Department build their writing skills. Miss Oppong-Kyeremeh announced that the second edition of the biannual newsletter would be out in December 2019. According to her, the second edition would be more detailed with agro-based analysis, business ideas that can be executed with good cost benefit analysis. She encouraged the students to support the newsletter by contributing more articles for publication.