Haramaya University launched Agricultural and Rural Innovation Incubation Hub (ARIHUB) and trained its first intake of trainees on Entrepreneurship and Agribusiness Development at Haramaya University (ARIHUB) for 30 Local Youths from December 20-23, 2020 at Rare Training Center.
During the opening ceremony of the training, Dr. Zelalem Bekeko, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Science, explain the importance of training and incubation centers to build local capacities and innovation and promote agricultural commercialization. He added that such initiatives not only will enhance the innovation and entrepreneurial capacities of students and local youth groups but also improve farmers’ livelihood through demand-driven technology development and incubation.
According to Dr.Getachew Shambel, the organizer of the training and principal investigator and coordinator for student and local youth training at ARIHUB, building local capacities and innovation is a core pillar of agricultural transformation and promoting empowerment and a key responsibility of research universities such as Haramaya University are tasked with.
Dr. Getachew added that the ARIHUB model of entrepreneurship is the first of its kind at Haramaya University. The ARIHUB will serve as a laboratory to experiment and incubate innovation, business ideas, and agricultural technologies by students, local youth groups, and researchers.
It was highlighted that the ARIHUB is not the same as the conventional entrepreneurship model. Unlike conventional entrepreneurship training, the ARIHUB model at HU integrates entrepreneurship training with innovation incubation and Multi-stakeholder Innovation Platforms (MSIPs). The use of MSIPs in the AIH is to promote co-learning, mentorship, identify emerging needs and relevant technologies to address expressed need of the local people and other stakeholders, and provide opportunities to tap into existing strong business networks.
