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Industry analysis and market attractiveness: Understand how to analyse an industry, using the dairy sector in Uganda as an example and what makes a market attractive for incumbents or future entrants. Value disciplines: Understand and apply the different value disciplines companies can choose from to achieve market-leading positions. Business integration: Understand some of the key benefits of vertical integration and when it may or may not make sense to integrate. Doing business in Africa: Understand the specific generic challenges of doing business in Africa, particularly in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Generalisability of frameworks: Realise that the same frameworks that are used to analyse large firms and mature markets can be applied to smaller firms in less developed markets.

The case is set in the early months of 2020, as Bernd Schanzenbächer, founder and managing partner of EBG Capital (a Swiss investment firm that manages a multimillion global portfolio of agricultural investments), and his team are deciding whether to invest in a dairy farm in Uganda. The opportunity looks quite interesting and the EBG Capital team believes there is a good fit between the farm owners’ needs, its management team’s objectives and EBG Capital’s strengths and interests. However, the dairy market in Uganda faces many challenges and, while the market-demand fundamentals appear promising, the team wonders if it is the right time to invest. The issue for EBG Capital is to understand what makes the Ugandan dairy industry so challenging and to determine how to fix or mitigate some of the industry’s most pressing problems – given that it will be the firm’s first investment in the country – as well as for deciding where it makes sense to play in the broad value chain (i.e. only in milk production or also in milk processing).

Masters in Business Administration and Executive Education courses.

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CSS 11: Strategy.

Upon completion of this case study, students should be able to apply lessons learned in core readings, analysis and discussion to a specific case study dealing with a current, real-world situation, specifically: critically assess Livestock Wealth’s case facts and present and justify their point of view – based on attentive reading, critical analysis and engagement – about the company; use a range of strategic tools such as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis, PESTLE analysis and the Ansoff matrix to thoroughly evaluate Livestock Wealth’s internal and external business environment for developing strategic options for business growth and improvements to marketing strategy; use strategic thinking to develop a range of creative solutions to guide the company’s business growth and improvements to marketing strategy; and assess their own growth and development in terms of personal preparation and organisation, collaboration, critical thinking, decision-making skills, participation and problem-solving.

By February 2022, Ntuthuko Shezi, the founder and chief executive officer of Livestock Wealth, had turned his idea of “crowd farming”, which enables anyone to invest in living farm assets and earn a profit at harvest, into a full-fledged business that was creating wealth for both investors and farmers. Underpinning this case study is Shezi’s vision of an African continent where there is “no ground that is not planted with something of value”, local economies are created in those areas, communities are wealthy, there is abundance, there is money for children to attend school and ultimately where “cows (and agricultural produce in general) are seen as money”. Shezi had grown up in a rural area with grandparents who owned a couple of cows, realizing that the cows were the bedrock of the family’s finances. Describing his business, he says, “Cattle are like a walking bank, and we see ourselves as the bank of the future, where every person who owns a cow can access financial services through Livestock Wealth, just like it has always been in Africa.” This case study describes the two key decisions that Shezi needed to make – what direction to take in terms of business growth and how to improve his marketing strategy (with a limited budget) to attract sufficient investment into Livestock Wealth to make his dreams a reality.

This case study is suitable for use for a post-graduate diploma in business, master of business administration or master’s in management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy.

The case is designed for business students at the undergraduate or MBA levels in courses that deal with social entrepreneurship. The case describes the future growth potential of the exotic vegetable/fruit market in emerging economy India and lends itself for use in Rural Management courses as well.

Nisarg Nirman Agro Products Private Limited (hereafter referred as NNPL), a social farming venture, was started by Anjali Churi in the year 1997 in India. Churi, an agriculturist at heart, was always interested in experimenting and conducting research on new crops. What started as a small research experiment soon prospered to become a commercial venture producing and selling exotic vegetables to the Indian business customers, such as the five-/four-star hotels, premier clubs, hypermarkets, etc. NNPL was one among the pioneers to start the cultivation of exotic vegetables in the country. Their indigenous produce was of high quality. Their business customers were benefitted by the freshness of their products as well as competitive pricing as compared to their earlier imports. In her journey to commercial prosperity, she adopted co-operative farming, thus providing employment and livelihood opportunities to Indian farmers. Over the period, NNPL was invited to provide agriculture consulting to some of the other countries, such as Maldives, Thailand and Israel. In 2014, the company boasted of an indigenous produce of 95 different varieties of exotic vegetables and fruits, with 34 clients across the country, revenues to the tune of INR40 million and touching lives of more than 600 farmers across the country. The Indian exotic vegetables market had a promising future. Churi desired to expand her venture but in a manner that could systematically impact and generate employment opportunities for the rural Indians. She was at crossroads to deciding what could be such a venture, agro-processing or agro-tourism? Any such expansions required substantial investments for agricultural research activities. The case is structured to achieve the following pedagogical objectives: a social entrepreneur's ability to identify and exploit the market opportunity for growing own venture as well as generating a larger social impact; understand the industry's change trajectory and its impact on the venture; understand the importance of such business models of cooperative farming in populous emerging economies such as India where 70 per cent of the population resides in rural India.

The case that maps the growth/challenges of a social farming venture and allows students to: understand that small social venture also has the ability to generate a larger social impact; evaluate the venture's strategic positioning and scope in a competitive environment; and evaluate the need and potential of business models as cooperative farming to generate employment at the base of the pyramid in populous emerging economy as India.

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What started as a FMCG distributor in 1967 in Kenya as Export Finance Company, is now a dynamic global conglomerate across 48 countries and 5 continents — Export Trading Group. ETG was taken over by the then CFO Mahesh Patel after exit of the founding stakeholders. It was then when the company shifted its focus to being a key regional player. In the next 35 years, the company grew systematically. Business focus evolved when Patel saw an opportunity in logistics in remote sub-Saharan Africa. This was followed by business expansion with supply chain diversification and significant infrastructure investments. All the different businesses amalgamated under a single group for better operations and ease of scaling up. They were later divided into six separate verticals for better management. Vamara (FMCG vertical) was launched in 2018 as the company moved towards digitalisation — externally and internally. ETG plans to focus on new business opportunities and continue to diversify across geographies and portfolios.

Agricultural Trade, Farm Management, Economics of Food Safety

Both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics.

The pineapple production sector plays a very significant role in the Ghanaian horticultural industry. Production and export of fresh pineapple has been Ghana’s most developed high-value supply chain. However, the introduction of the GlobalGAP food safety standard in 2007 resulted in a fall in smallholder farmers’ participation in exportable pineapple production and subsequently led to declining trends in pineapple exports. The Ghanaian horticultural industry received quite a number of interventions over the years aimed at revitalizing the horticultural export sector and enhancing international competitiveness. However, the pineapple export sub-sector is still constrained with production and market access challenges meaning the sector struggles to survive.

The GlobalGAP standard compliance case is an appropriate way of explaining how smallholder farmers make informed decisions concerning the adoption of new farm practices. The case presents a careful evaluation of technical, institutional and socio-economic factors influencing a farmer’s decision to comply or not to comply with the GlobalGAP standard. Students should be able to apply farm management decision-making concepts and tools such as profit maximization and binary choice modelling techniques to explain a farmers’ final decisions on GlobalGAP standard compliance. This case should enable students to appreciate key factors constraining agricultural export trade performance in developing countries. The case should also contribute to students’ understanding of smallholder farmers’ decisions on food safety standards compliance, particularly GlobalGAP, and the challenges associated with the entire compliance process. Moreover, this case should provide students with possible policy considerations geared towards making food safety standards compliance easier, effective and sustainable in developing countries so as to enhance market access while ensuring food quality and safety along high-value food supply chains.

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CSS 7 Management Science

International business, Strategic management

BA and MA; courses: International business, Management courses with special focus on emerging and developing countries, Intercultural management, Strategic management.

Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa, June 2013 – Representatives of the London Mining Corporation and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH were discussing the details about the official launch of the From Mines to Minds project. The From Mines to Minds project consisted of two components technical, vocational and educational training at St. Joseph's and functional adult literacy for people who could not benefit from the upgrade of St. Joseph's in 17 communities around the mine site. Each of them had committed 200,000 euros to the project. While the mining company favored an early launch due to internal and external pressures, the development agency evaluated that they needed to have a consolidated program before advertising it locally and nationally. This joint decision on the official launch revealed more structural issues in the “fit” between these two organizations in this cross-sectoral partnership designed to contribute to local and national sustainable development.

The purpose of the case is twofold. The first aim is to introduce students/participants to the challenges that arise when entering into a cross-sectoral partnership with another organization in a development project. The second aim is to expose students to the operational, business and strategic challenges related to operating in the volatile local and national context of a least developed economy.

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Impact investing, Social enterprise.

MBA, EMBA, Executive Education.

Zoona mobile money: investing for impact details a slightly altered version of the real events that occurred in late 2011 with the series A round of investment in Zoona, a mobile money business in Zambia. The focus is on the decisions that have to be made by the management team of a socially innovative tech start-up (Zoona) providing mobile money and financial services to previously unbanked consumers in Zambia.

By the end of this case, the student should be able to: understand the basics of term sheets and be able to perform a high level analysis and comparison of two distinct term sheets; identify investor objectives, ultimately recognising the general differences between private equity and venture capital investors; identify and weigh the costs and benefits of term sheets, as well as identify negotiating points and necessary trade-offs in the investment process; and identify and understand the “soft” benefits of investors and weigh these in relation to a term sheet analysis.

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CSS 1: Accounting and Finance.

When established markets in the West are stagnating or in crisis, companies increasingly look to emerging markets, especially the so-called BRICs, for growth potential. However, these new markets also pose unique challenges, for which the best practices and assumptions of Western managers are not automatically suited. Setting up supply chains in new regions confronts firms with multiple challenges in terms of regulation, resources, culture, and infrastructure. In this case study, students will accompany a successful German FMCG manager as he plans his company’s expansion into Russia, and is forced to look at the opportunities and challenges from a new perspective.

The Farmcrowdy case pursues the following aims: familiarizing students with the concept of business models for agricultural businesses and explaining the key decisions and activities within a business model; recognizing different opportunities for business model innovation by farmers and stakeholders in the agricultural sector; identifying concepts and tools from the business world that can be used in farming and other agribusiness-related ventures; highlighting opportunities for agribusiness firms to engage in business model innovation; and developing a business model canvas that highlights key components of a business model.

Agriculture stands as the leading driver of economies in most African countries. Most people depend on this sector directly or indirectly for their livelihoods on a daily basis. However, due to challenges like climate change and its variability, high initial startups capital, poor pricing, pest attacks, among other factors, people are gradually opting out of this sector. This has implications for employment, food and human security issues for farmers, their families and the society at large. Individual farmers that opt to remain in this sector are often met with challenges accessing technology in adapting to the challenges aforementioned. This decreases their resilience to the impact of climate change and its variability, pest and disease attack, securing loans to expand farming operations, among others. This raises the risks associated with investment in this sector as one cannot be assured of a fixed return on investment at the end of each crop cycle. Investors who opted to manage this risk associated with investment in the agriculture sector had challenges getting an official database of farmers to invest in as well as knowing whether individual farmers are experienced enough and committed to fixed agreements. It is against this backdrop that Onyeka Akumah founded Farmcrowdy in Nigeria with the aim of empowering farmers and connecting investors to right farmers with an assured return on investment at the end of every crop growing or animal-rearing season using online technological packages. The Farmcrowdy business model allowed Nigerians to venture into farming and other agricultural ventures at the touch of a button while empowering local farmers and boosting food production, creating employment for all stakeholders in the agricultural value chain. With ensuing challenges and competitors in the agro-technological industry, Farmcrowdy aims at extending their business model to other West African countries like Ghana. A few suggestions are made to help improve Farmcrowdy business model. First, they can add novel activities to the business model. Second, they can change one or more parties that perform business model activities. Finally, they can link business model activities in new ways like the development of model farms as a training ground for new farmers and the development of a go-back-to nature campaign to end-users of the products from farms. This case can be used by different audiences. The case can be used for teaching students at the graduate level, especially in the development of executive courses on innovation and entrepreneurship, strategy, agricultural technology and innovation. A wealth of supporting materials is available to the Professor, including videos and background information.

PhD, Doctor of Business Administration, Executive MBA

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CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

Subject Area: Strategy – dealing with a particular type of strategic alliance (Public Private Partnership) as a strategy to enter a new business segment.

MBA and other similar programs at the postgraduation level.

The current case deals with Yes Bank, one of the largest private sector banks in India. The main objective of the case is to help the students to understand the banking industry, and the structure and implementation of Public–Private Partnership (PPP) at a large Indian Bank. The case also intends to highlight the cost and revenue drivers for a particular industry. Yes Bank is contemplating entering into the Indian Agricultural financing sector that has huge potential. The case describes how to analyze the sector using Porter's five force model. Also, there are several modes of entering the sector, including joint-ventures, mergers, direct investments and PPPs. The case describes the benefits and issues associated with each of the mentioned strategies. Further, the case also describes the challenges and benefits of PPPs as a mode of generating growth opportunities.

The case can be a part of a banking course as well as a strategy course. The current case allows the students to make decisions while dealing with situations pertaining to sustainable development and implementation of PPPs. The major expected learning outcomes of the current case are: to be able to understand industry structure, using the banking sector as an example; to be able to list down the revenue and cost drivers for Indian banks; to be able to identify investment drivers for a particular industry, such as agriculture; to be able to analyze the agricultural financing industry using the Porter's five force model; to be able to analyze different modes of entering a new sector and the challenges associated with each one of them; and to be able to comprehend the role of PPPs in entering new areas of business.

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