After the three months internship a report with be presented to the partners. The internship probably will not be long enough to do all the work that needs to be done before starting with the construction of the greenhouse. The most important job for now is to check all the assumptions that are made regarding the business and project plan. Because the project is a large scale greenhouse, mistakes cannot be set right easily. Therefore, before the start of the build, the feasibility of the project must be checked. In the report a recommendation for the continuation of the project will be proposed. This recommendation might include another internship within the minor International Entrepreneurship & Development next year. Because this project is still very in the beginning it might be helpful to have another group of students around so that TU Delft (and probably we too) stay involved.
Apart from this, after we leave things are just getting started! If we manage to complete the business plan with a reliable market research and to propose a useful greenhouse design, an agreement with an investor should be made. If the financial resources are available an action plan in detail including construction planning, communication structure, project management procedures, monitoring & evaluation and reporting to the investor must be made. HortiTerra must be established as legal entity in Ghana and after that, the construction work on the greenhouse can start. If the greenhouse is there, Stage One, as described in the business model canvas, is about to commence. Stage One is the business stage and will be followed by Stage Two: the educational stage. To make the greenhouse an educational centre, it has to be a healthy business. The first growing cycle if vegetables in the greenhouse is done before there will be students. This cycle will take up to three to four months. After these first months Stage 2 will start and Stage One will continue to maintain the healthy business HortiTerra will become. For the educational stage a lot of details still have to be sorted out. This might be a suitable research project for the next group of students, maybe in collaboration with the agricultural universities in Kumasi: KITA and/or KNUST.