Grand Challenges and The AgriFood Entrepreneurship Initiative:

Grand Challenges and The AgriFood Entrepreneurship Initiative:

Lessons from Randomized Control Trials in Tanzania - November 17 – 9a CST

Food security and post-harvest loss in developing economies is a key grand challenge of our time. The need for resilient and efficient food systems has become more important in light of disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic and military conflicts. Within this context, entrepreneurial programs that facilitate bottom-up experimentation and local innovation are critical for creating sustainable solutions by domestic small and medium scale enterprises.

The panelists of this session will share perspectives based on the AgriFood Entrepreneurship Initiative in Tanzania. Led by an international team of economics and management scholars, the Initiative provided entrepreneurship training to 200 food sector entrepreneurs within a randomized control field experiment. Panelists will describe the scope and format of the training program, and key lessons learned from engaging with participating entrepreneurs. These perspectives offer novel insights on why and how human enterprise can be leveraged to address socio-economic challenges that are particularly wicked in a developing economy context.