THE FARMER BUSINESS SCHOOL.

THE APPROACH TO EDUCATIVE FARMING. 

The Farmer Business School (FBS) approach was developed by the Project “Sustainable Cocoa Business 

(SCB)” of GIZ in 2010 with private and public partners. Building on the successes, other GIZ pro-

grammes as well as public and private partners have adapted FBS to other export and food commodi-

ties. Together, we have made FBS training possible for over 900,000 smallholders in 16 African 

countries. FBS has become a unique selling point of GIZ as more and more GIZ projects and partners 

are interested to adapt the approach to their context and particular needs. 

For this reason, the Sustainable Smallholder Agri-Business (SSAB) Programme was commissioned in 

2017 by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to establish the FBS 

Advisory Facility with the mandate to support further dissemination of FBS in Africa. 

This handbook is geared to support you in the successful introduction and management of the FBS 

approach. Building on practical experiences and lessons learnt gathered throughout the years, this 

handbook provides guidelines, tools and recommendations. 

First of all, we would like to thank BMZ, our co-financiers the World Cocoa Foundation, the Bill & 

Melinda Gates Foundation, the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk-sharing System for Agricultural Lending 

(NIRSAL) and the European Union for the financial support provided to develop FBS and to bring it 

to scale in cocoa producing countries of West and Central Africa. This would not have been possible 

without the enthusiastic commitment of our – more than 30 – implementing partners. 

Our special thanks go to our colleagues from the programmes, who decided to adapt FBS to their 

specific context and countries. They indeed enriched the concept over the past years by keeping the 

quality standards high. Many thanks to all producers and producer organisations, who took part in the 

development of FBS and who helped us to adapt FBS to different contexts and countries.

Thanks to the members of SNRD Africa (Sector Network Rural Development) Working Group 

Agribusiness and Food Security (ABFS). They enhanced the dissemination of FBS by exchange and 

more particularly by the study on FBS in Africa published in 2015. Together with this handbook, 

this study serves as a reference for parties interested to learn about FBS and its sustainable implemen-

tation.

Let us embrace the call to agribusiness and agri-education in Nigeria.