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Strengthening institutional capacity of agri-business extension services in Papua New Guinea

12 January 2022

FAO-led EU-STREIT PNG upscales Papua New Guinea's institutional agri-business extension services to promote and facilitate rural women and youth ventures.

To provide a sustainable basis for supporting rural citizens of Papua New Guinea in establishing and managing sustainable agribusinesses, the EU Funded UN Joint STREIT Programme rolled out a tailored Training-of-Trainers (ToTs) workshop to develop the institutional capacity of governmental agri-business extension services in Vanimo, Sandaun Province.

Conducted in partnership with the Wewak Small Enterprise Promotion Centre (WSEP), pulled together 32 governmental participants from 10 districts in the Greater Sepik Region, including 12 women and 20 men from government agencies like Commerce and Industry, Fisheries, Department of Agriculture and Livestock, Community Development and Human Resource Division of East Sepik and Sandaun Provincial Governments.

Held in Vanimo, Sandaun Province, the trainings also received a high interest from private sector organisations as well so included seven additional participants from Wewak Council of Women, West Sepik Investment Limited, Women-In-Business (Development for Community), and Sandaun Council of Women.

The training provided a window of opportunity for the Government's extension services officers to refresh their presentation skills with appropriate tools given by master trainers.

One key output of this endeavour is the formation of a Greater Sepik Secretariat. This body will liaise with WSEP and the EU-STREIT PNG Programme to roll out all business upskilling training in the Sepik Region's selected districts.

Highlighting the expected benefits from this partnership, the Programme Coordinator for EU-STREIT PNG, Dr Xuebing Sun, explained how the Programme supports the Government in addressing the agribusiness development obstacles in the Sepik; "There is less number of formalised SMEs in the agriculture sector. Many may blame poor infrastructure conditions, lack of adequate market facilities, or even high cost of transportation as the principal causes of business failure, but the root problem is lack of proper skills and knowledge in managing sustainable businesses," said Dr Sun.

"The intention here is to minimise high rate of business failure in rural areas, encourage youths to start-up profitable businesses at a young age, thus contribute meaningfully to rural economic development in the Sepik, and PNG as a whole," added Dr Sun.

Sandaun Provincial Administrator Mr Conrad Tilau and his Commerce Director Mr Ian Tonte, in their graduation speeches, conversely called on the Programme to extend a similar partnership to West Sepik Commerce to utilise their upskilled business development officers (BDOs) as well.

The training was also acknowledged as a timely intervention by the FAO-led EU-STREIT PNG and local partners to support the Small Medium Enterprise Corporation (SMEC) target to train over 200 BDOs by 2026.

Meanwhile, the 32 accredited government-affiliated trainers are now enabled to train aspiring agripreneurs with financial and management tools in their respective districts to take part effectively in developing agri-enterprises in the cocoa, vanilla and fisheries value chains supported under the EU-STREIT PNG Programme.

The EU-STREIT PNG, being implemented as a United Nations Joint Programme (FAO as leading agency/administrative agent, and ILO, ITU, UNCDF and UNDP as implementing partners), is the largest grant-funded Programme of the European Union in the country and the Pacific region, which focuses on increasing sustainable and inclusive economic development of rural areas through Increasing the economic returns and opportunities from cocoa, vanilla and fishery value chains and strengthening and improving the efficiency of value chain enablers including the business environment and supporting sustainable, climate-proof transport and energy infrastructure development.