The UniBRAIN initiative promotes innovation by improving tghe flow of technology and knowledge by removing barriers between actors in the value chains. It is the synergy and linkage between the diverse actors tht catalyses and drives innovations. UniBRAIN links university education, research and business in sustainable agriculture, with the following objectives:

1. To develop and implement colllaborative programmes fostering innovation among universities, research institutions and the private sector.

2. To strengthen African agricultural innovation systems, which are expected to deliver the new and improved technologies that are required to improve agricultural productivity

3. To develop and implement improved and better contextualised undergraduate and postgraduate agribusiness teaching and learning.

4. To facilitate exchange of experiences and sharing of resources and knowledge.

The UniBRAIN Agribusiness Innovation Incubators function as training, research and advisory centres for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), start-ups and enterprises undertaking change and innovation. They are also businesses in their own right providing problem solving, testing and validation, and business development services to innovators and agribusinesses. UniBRAIN promotes a value chain approach so that the incubators will be able to support innovations to address constrainsts and opportunities at any point in the value chain. As such, the term private enterprise encompasses entrepreneurs and innovators across the board, including but not limited to farmers and producers associations, input suppliers and produce buyers, processors amd marketers.

The African continent faces tremendous global challenges to meet the Millennium Development Goals and needs to address various issues, including poverty, hunger and malnutrition, loss of biodiversity, and climate change that causes incresingly frequent extreme weather conditions accompanied by pandemics. All of these affect, and are affected by, the state of African agriculture, on which 65 percent of Africans, i.e. over 400 million people, depend for their livelihood. As Africa's dominant industry and employer, agriculture holds the key to the continent's social and economic development, especially the welfare of the poorest populations. Yet agriculture's contribution to the economy does on  match its potential.

The lack of sufficient human and institutional capacity for agricultural innovation is a severe constraint on African agricultural development. According to the African Commission: African universities are not sufficiently geared to meet the needs of industry. Graduates often cannot find employment, while many small businesses lack staff with the education and skills needed to drive innovation. Essentially, the relationship between the demands of the private sector and what universities teach is too weak. However, studies, show that when university graduates do business, they create more jobs than those without a university education. Nowhere are these deficiencies more critical than in agriculture, Africa's dominant industry.