The AYuTe (Agriculture, Youth and Technology) Africa Challenge is an agribusiness competition implemented by Heifer which seeks to foster the creation of social businesses that address the challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Africa by providing the support and financing required to take their ideas from concept to market. The program is an agricultural transformation initiative designed to catalyze the strategic shift needed to secure a sustainable and dynamic future for Africa’s smallholder farmers and Africa’s agricultural sector.

The program also aims to make agriculture a more desirable occupation by providing numerous opportunities for leveraging and integrating technology from farm to market, making the sector more appealing to the next generation of farmers.Kasher Consulting conducted a comprehensive impact assessment and baseline assessment of the top six finalists to evaluate the impact of the Agri-tech innovation on small-holder farmers and to establish baseline values for the project outcome indicators to serve as a guide for evaluating the outcomes of the project interventions.

The key benefit of this agribusiness innovation competition is that it catalyzes ground-up innovation from young Africans who would otherwise not innovate in the agricultural sector.