Agribusiness Experts Baghdad & Basrah The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Iraq assists the Iraqi Government on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The BMZ has commissioned GIZ to implement the Private Sector Development and Employment Promotion(PSD) Project in Iraq. Aiming to create employment opportunities and to support the increase of income, the project has a particular focus on young people (esp. the inclusion of women) and returning refugees. In Dec 2020 the project received a co-funding from the European Union to extend its activities and especially upscale approaches for business growth in the agribusiness sector. The project comprises of two Modules which are Macro Economic Policy Consulting and Labour Market Interventions. The latter is tasked with Skills Development and Job Placement, Inclusion and Integration for Job Market Re-entry and SME development support, innovation and cooperation with the international private sector. The project is working with an integrative approach to promote innovative business ideas, as well as technology transfer and the development of local capacities. Beneath other sectors the project is focusing on the agribusiness sector as it has been identified for its potential to enhance existing value chains and create new products and services for additional value creation and enhancement of the employed people in the sector. agribusiness is understood as part of the agricultural value chain focusing on the processes happening after harvesting (post harvesting) of agricultural products. It includes products or services that are linked with storing, transporting, grading, distributing, processing, packaging, marketing, trading, etc. of agricultural products. Like most other sectors, the private-sector is under-developed for agribusiness as in general the economy is distorted by a heavy reliance on public sector employment and state-support derived from oil revenues. Additionally, by the decades of instability and war the sector of agribusiness has been particularly affected due to the lack of investment, isolation from the global economy and counterproductive agricultural policies. Iraqi agribusinesses and markets are just beginning to modernize their operations in order to compete with imports and meet local demands since imported products have undercut the local market. The perception of indigenous products from consumers side has to improve and these have to gain back attractiveness and consumers’ confidence. For post-harvest operations, main obstacles for growth include the poor application of good practices, which restricts maintaining a good and safe final product, and hence hinders its marketability at reasonable prices. This is deriving from insufficient agricultural extension and education in post-harvesting handling and marketing, to weak organisation of wholesale markets and lack of transparency in their transactions, to the lack of dissemination of marketing information and hence poor agricultural planning, non-activation and organisation of quality indicators. The private sector has a relatively low organised structure at the post-production level, marketing cooperatives are limited, post-harvest management and handling (especially for export) are poor, the post-harvest infrastructure is weak, traceability is absent. All this leads to an increase in post-production loss and hence to a decrease in producers and processors’ profit margins. In 2019 the PSD project in Mosul already implemented agribusiness capacity building measures and an acceleration program for small companies and start-ups to help them establish activities in this field. The PSD project aims at fostering innovation by conducting an innovation focused agribusiness entrepreneurship program which include an ideation, incubation and piloting phase as a core and that should run over the course of one year and is accompanied by Capacity Development measures. 

The general objective of this assignment is to strengthen the private sector development and enhance the potential for growth in the sector by creating and developing innovative business approaches that will be successful as a real business. We are targeting to activate local market dynamics that lead to a) the establishment of entrepreneurs and new specialized start-ups and b) provides new innovative business activities for already established local, thereby generating inspiring new job opportunities for young male and female engineers and technicians that contribute to healthy and hygienic as well as environmental sound agribusiness in the region.