Chronicle Online e-News
Students put marketing and management skills to work for Kenya's seed industry
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Feb07/huong.seed.html
Feb. 27, 2007
By Huong Quynh Pham
hqp2@cornell.edu
In early January, five Cornell students led by Edward T. Mabaya, a
research associate in Cornell's Department of Applied Economics and
Management, traveled to Kenya for an intense 10-day field study.
Their task: work with two local seed companies to lay out business
and marketing strategies in Kenya's competitive seed industry.
They were the fourth group of students to travel abroad with the
Seeds of Development Program (SODP), an initiative devoted to
alleviating rural poverty in Africa.
Mabaya and his students worked with Freshco Seed in Nairobi and Oil
Crops Development in Nakuru. The students consulted with senior
personnel, visited maize farms and talked to distributors who serve
as an important link in the companies' sales chain.
The students then developed comprehensive marketing strategies,
including designing promotional brochures and building Web sites, and
presented empirical approaches with broader perspectives that the
companies need for future growth. They will follow up by writing a
case study and individual papers, and by providing additional
consultations for the two companies.
Seed has been shown to play a crucial role in the sustainability of
the agricultural system and in food protein supply in sub-Saharan
Africa. But building systems to deliver the most recent technologies
to farmers is a challenge.
"The overall objective of the field course is to help students build
skills needed to address critical issues most likely faced by those
doing small and medium business in emerging markets by developing
sustainable growth strategies for a number of selected small and
medium private seed companies," Mabaya said. "Specifically, those
strategies will help to make the companies more competitive in both
local and international markets, more unflinching to challenges, at
the same time reducing risks."
The demand for quality seeds in Kenya is high, especially for
hybrids, improved open-pollinated varieties and indigenous seeds. But
those seeds are not always physically or financially available to the
farmers. Small and medium seed companies must overcome the poor rural
transportation infrastructure, the lack of effective sales points and
inadequate access to financial services -- not to mention competition
from multinational corporations.
As the students addressed those issues, they got satisfaction from
knowing they were making a difference -- and a valuable new
perspective on the needs of developing countries.
"This experience opened my eyes to new ways of looking at
development," said Laura Cramer, a graduate student in international
agriculture and rural development. "I went from solely an NGO
[nongovernmental organization] perspective to really understanding
the possibilities of public-private partnerships."
The SOPD is a project of Market Matters Inc., a nonprofit
organization, which works in collaboration with the Emerging Markets
Program at Cornell.
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Huong Quynh Pham is a graduate student at the Cornell Institute for
Public Affairs.
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