What Are University Incubated Agribusinesses: A Sustainability Description of University Incubated Agribusinesses in Kenya

Universities are promoting entrepreneurship incubation as a means of instilling an entrepreneurial mindset and creation of business ventures among university students. This is necessitated by the bulging youth unemployment among university graduates in the world and most sub-Saharan African countries. This initiative aims at creating graduates who are job creators and not job seekers. Despite these efforts, youth unemployment rates continue to rise among most graduates. Moreover, most university-incubated youth-led businesses have a high failure rate with a majority of them not seeing a second birthday. To address this issue, the study sought to examine the nature of incubated agribusinesses and their sustainability performance in seven selected universities in Kenya. A multistage sampling procedure technique along with Cochran’s (1963) formula for determining populations that are large and unknown were used to select 272 respondents whose businesses were incubated at their universities. Using an index and descriptive statistics, University Incubated agribusinesses in Kenya on average exist for only one year and five months. Results also revealed that the university-incubated agribusinesses under study were 68.2% sustainable indicating a fair performance. They revealed a higher performance in social sustainability (72.8% of its dimensional scores) as compared to economic and environmental sustainability (65.2% and 70% respectively of their dimensional scores). To ensure the long-term success of university-incubated youth agribusinesses, the study recommends that university business incubators should assess the expectations of their participants before they enroll them. The study also suggests that universities should create standardized policies, and procedures governing all stages of incubation. Moreover, youths with university-incubated agribusinesses need to intensify their economic, social, and environmental practices and strategies to ensure the holistic sustainability of their agribusinesses.