BAC-Institutional Capacity Development for sustainable agricultural improvement (BAC-ICD)

Project number: NICHE-KEN-214

Project title: BAC-Institutional Capacity Development for sustainable agricultural improvement (BAC-ICD)

Requesting organisation: Baraka Agricultural College

Project description:  To contribute to food security and better livelihoods for the farming project communities in rural Kenya, this project aims to strengthen Baraka Agricultural College’s academic and organisational capacity to act as a centre of excellence in Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) delivering entrepreneurial, gender sensitive hands-on graduates and farmers, applied research, and products and services of high quality standards in a consistent and sustainable manner.

The project will assist in strengthening BAC’s managerial and organisational capabilities, systems and plans to sustain the newly developed and revised curricula and the SARD centre. BAC envisions to have an organisational learning culture, appropriate systems and procedures to implement innovative practices and to establish and maintain partnerships.

The academic and support staff will be able to implement practical, entrepreneurial, gender sensitive curricula in SARD and innovative teaching and learning approaches for programmes at different levels (day releases, short courses, certificate and diploma). All teaching, research and products and services will be responsive to a changing economic, socio-cultural, environmental and technological environment and labour market. Achieving an effective business orientation in both BAC’s management, staff and operations, and in the training, research and products and services, is a priority for BAC, for which it seeks assistance.

The centre of excellence in SARD has to become fully self-sustainable and appreciated as an exemplary centre by students, visitors, stakeholders and policy makers. The demand driven and gender-sensitive applied research results are expected to be highly valued by farmers and stakeholders.