Every organisation that does not innovate runs the risk of becoming irrelevant or missing very good opportunities ofeither meetingits clients’ needsor improving its product offer.
Indeed,innovation in the coffee industry in Africa must be givenserious attention, inorder to addressthe critical challenges in our value chain.
Dynamic, relevant research that tackles not just inputs, but also the whole value chain and the policy frameworkresults is an important part of the process. Africa’scoffee research miserably lags behind that ofother coffee producing regions of the world, and research stations in the different African countries are characteristically either understaffed or poorly resourced.
Thus, new partnerships as well as innovations are needed in order to address thesechallenges, and we need entrepreneurial leadership in our various organisations or enterprises.
One of the key preoccupations of entrepreneurial leaders is to promote knowledge creation as well as knowledge sharing so as to effectively stimulate creativity and innovation in their respective organisations.
Innovation begins with a vision, and innovative leaders have the ability to manage science and technology and they allocate resources towards innovative advances.
It has been further noted that innovative leaders place a premium on experimentation rather than just planning(though the latter is important), and a number of coffee farmers have adopted the methodology of field trials, where important lessons are being learnt about various coffee varieties.
This is an innovative approachand we need more of these.We also need to focus on the young people, and promote their innovativeness!
Some organisational research conducted in Asia (Thailand) showed that there were higher levels of enthusiasm as well as the tendency to embraceinnovativeideas among younger employees in the organisationssurveyed, leadingto the conclusion that entrepreneurial leaders needed to pay closer attention to the innovative efforts of younger people in their respective enterprises.
This fits in well with our current drive to engage the youth and encourage them to play an active role in thecoffee industry in Africa.The October 2015 Forbes list of African entrepreneurs reported many young Africans who had come up with new innovations.
The 2014 Digital Entrepreneurship Report (Kenya) indicated an emergence of a digital entrepreneurship ecosystem, which I think could be critical to the question of our digital mapping of our African coffee producers, and building a database that will provide us accurate data to augmentour current coffee research efforts.
Currently, IACO – InterAfrican Coffee Organisation - is working in partnership with the African Development Bank and other partners to develop a facility at the Bank that will, among other things, support innovations and provide competitive grants in promoting innovative ideas aimed at coffee value chain transformation.
A design workshop aimed at articulating this facility is to be held in April this year. I hope this facilitywill enhancethe efforts of partners like AFCAtosupportinnovative efforts especially of our young people in the coffee industry.
The author is the Secretary General of IACO. He gave these views in a speech at the 14th edition of African Fine Coffee Conference & Exhibition, which Dar es Salaam hosted between February 3 and 5.
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