Putting 10 Million Youths to Work Annually

Sub-Saharan Africa has two plentiful resources: its youth and agricultural land. With the most youthful population globally and the largest share of the world’s arable property, Africa stands to benefit greatly from getting and keeping the youth involved in farming.

Africa’s agricultural sector has got the lowest productivity in the world. This particular contributes to food insecurity and malnutrition on the continent.

Estimates tend to be that ten million African youth enter the labour market annually. There are questions on how to provide stable employment for them. These types of questions are of the utmost importance.

Young people aged 15 in order to 24 account for 20% (226 million) from the continent’s population. This age cohort expects to increase by 42% through 2030 – faster than Latin America, Europe, and North America.

United Nations (2013) World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision.

That is why the future of Africa is in the hands of the youth. They are one of the greatest assets along with a force to reckon with for improving the productivity as well as growth of all sectors of Africa’s economy. They are powerful, enthusiastic, resourceful, creative, revolutionary, and adventurous. They come from different and highly varied social backgrounds, cultures, and customs. They are very heterogeneous and one can’t ignore them to achieve an African renaissance in the 21st century.

The range to get the youth involved

With proper preparing and well-structured social and financial policy formulation and implementation, Africa’s youth can be mobilised to provide goods and services. Unemployed youth have a tendency to turn to violence and crime. Youth idleness can jeopardize political stability, as the Arab-speaking Spring and the recent well-liked uprising in Burkina Faso have demonstrated.

Agriculture is one avenue to consider with regard to creating jobs, increasing manufacturing, and raising productivity. These goals are crucial if the continent is to reduce food insecurity. Further opportunities exist across the value chain, from harvest production to the processing associated with raw agricultural produce in to food to the distribution of these to markets.

In addition to producing much-needed income and employment, agricultural growth benefits the weakest people the most.

What’s holding back the youth

Evidence suggests that the youth are leaving farming in some African countries. This underscores the need to demonstrate the actual profitability of agriculture for an increasingly highly educated Africa youth population.

The 2015 Africa Farming Status Report highlights the use challenges brought about by the developing youth population. The reasons at the rear of the youth unemployment crisis include drudgery embodied by traditional farming, doubts about the economic viability of agriculture, as well as limited career opportunities in rural areas.

Constraints to youth engaging in agriculture include insufficient access to land, credit, training, and ICT. Young women are especially impacted. With different roles attributed to men and women in society, young women face greater challenges making a living out of agriculture. They have lower use of land, water, credit in addition to new technologies and information.

Addressing these restrictions is crucial for sustained improvements in agricultural productivity and food security in Africa.

How entrepreneurship can help

The main avenue to offer the three most important goals for economic growth in Africa is entrepreneurship:

* employment for the youth

* food security and sustained

* inclusive economic expansion with the agricultural field as the major contributor

This is because it fosters social inclusivity by reducing income inequalities across gender, age, as well as between rural and urban locations. However, the success is actually conditional on the youth getting the right skills and use of improved seeds, fertiliser as well as machinery. Another key factor is actually infrastructure as well as a conducive coverage environment.

Financial inclusion is a big anchor of youth success in entrepreneurship in agriculture. The report provides several options with regard to improving youth access to finance without requiring fixed security. This includes contract farming, renting, warehouse receipt financing and factoring.

ICT makes agriculture exciting

Information as well as communication technologies can help reverse the youth’s negative perceptions towards agriculture and increase its attractiveness. They use these with regard to record-keeping (Excel spreadsheets), for providing price information (through SMS) and for creating virtual marketplaces that help link farmers in order to markets so they can get better costs.

They are also help in developing programs for livestock management as well as crop production and for marketing agriculture among the youth via social platforms. As one female youth explains:

ICTs make agriculture interesting and easier; they make getting things done more cost-effective and provide access to needed information.

The capacity of countries to develop the youth’utes skills in the agricultural sector and implementing the policies as part of the Malabo Declaration discussed within the Africa Agriculture Status Report.

Among other goals, the Malabo Declaration aims at reducing poverty among youth and women. Two of the goals clearly target women and youngsters.

The first goal recommends which countries create job opportunities for at least 30% of the rural youth populace in agricultural value chains. The second urges countries to aid and facilitate preferential entry as well as participation for women and youngsters in gainful and attractive agribusiness opportunities.

The statement highlights the limitations of the official training system in terms of access and quality. It suggests opportunities in terms of informal as well as non-formal training to reach more youngsters, especially in the rural areas.

The report reviews continental and national policies that guide surgery for the youth involvement in agriculture and other sectors of the economy. Financing and applying the policies remain the best challenges in achieving the coverage goals.

The report also highlights institutional mechanisms that support youngsters participation in policy design. Those include national youngsters councils, ministries of youth matters and youth-enterprise development funds.

The crucial message is that youth would be the backbone of agricultural change in Africa. As such, they require training, support in being able to access factors of production, and have a conducive policy environment for them to achieve their potential.

Africa’utes youth and abundant arable property are a potential winning combination is republished with permission from The Conversation