By Jimoh Babatunde

Lack of land,credit, quality farm inputs, machinery and other impediments have been identified as factors preventing agriculture from providing jobs on and off the farm for a youth population that accounts for about 65 percent of the African population.

These were contained in a hard hitting report developed by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in its 2015 Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR), Youth in Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The reports launched at the ongoing African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), which is taking place in Lusaka, Zambia warns Africa will neither solve its chronic food shortages nor its urgent employment challenges without an immediate, aggressive effort to address the series of problems holding back Africa’s under-25 population from joining the agriculture sector.

AGRA President, Dr. Agnes Kalibata, noted that a continent with such vast holdings of arable land and a large and increasingly educated young workforce should be the envy of world.

She regretted that instead, most Africans—including, ironically, millions of our farmers—are relying on imports to feed their families.

Dr. Agnes Kalibata, who was formerly Rwanda’s minister of agriculture and animal resources added that “our growing population of young people, who should be a treasured resource for economic growth, are often labeled a ‘ticking time bomb’ for fear their lack of job prospects will generate instability.”

But the AGRA President said there are numerous examples in this year’s report that illustrate the potential for a far more promising scenario emerging on a continent where, thanks in part to a hard-earned reduction in childhood mortality, there are now 226 million people between 15- and 24-years-old and by mid-century, there could be twice that many.

Meanwhile, the World Bank sees rising incomes in Africa’s rapidly expanding urban centers, generating a consumer food market that by 2030 will be worth US$1 trillion. And many experts believe those demands could be met by farms and related agriculture business located in African rural communities that are the only rural regions in the world where the youth population is rising—and will continue to do so for decades.

The AASR concludes that “with an abundant supply of youthful labor and an increasing demand for food and farm products, African countries should be able to provide the skills and knowledge” young Africans need to realize the many business opportunities in growing, processing and selling the food African consumers demand.

“But as it stands, much of that opportunity is currently benefiting producers outside of Africa. Africans spend more than $60 billion on food imports each year. And on the retail side, European and US food retail giants like Royal Ahold and Walmart are moving into Africa, with their high standards for the quantity and quality of the food products they carry.” The report contained.

But the AGRA report finds multiple challenges could block African farmers and agriculture business from seizing this opportunity. Some of the challenges identified include: the absence of a properly defined land rights tenure system; a lack of capital and limited access to finance and credit; inadequate supply of improved farming inputs, such as high-yielding crop varieties developed for local conditions and affordable fertilizers; and the limited availability of new and innovative technologies, such as machinery that is appropriate for the needs of African farmers and local agriculture businesses.

Other challenges were untapped entrepreneurship skills; and limited public and private sector investment in infrastructure essential to agriculture, such as transportation.
The AASR finds all of these problems, while familiar to many, weigh more heavily on young people. Therefore, overcoming them will require additional, targeted interventions focused on making agriculture a viable employment option for Africa’s youth.

But at the same time, the report finds that if African countries cannot convince youth to embrace agriculture and infuse it with their “energy, creativity, and entrepreneurial” spirit, food production is likely to falter and the sector overall will not realize its potential to become an engine of economic growth for all Africans.

The chief executive officer and head of mission of the Africa-wide Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), Dr Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, urged older Africans to mentor and inspire a new generation of Africans to embrace more efficient, productive, and profitable forms of farming.

“We have failed as adults to bring to them the modern way of doing agriculture,” she said. “It is said the agriculture my grandparents practiced is now the agriculture that is producing stunting across Africa.”

Dr. Sibanda said the report “illustrates that Africa’s future is its youth, and we ignore them at our peril. We must invest in educating and empowering them to build their entrepreneurial and technical skills and spirit,” she said, “so that they can play their rightful role in increasing agricultural productivity across the continent.”

She added “Our youth is our most valuable currency and human capital and if we do not create platforms, policies and institutions that attract and retain them in agriculture, we are creating a tomorrow that is unpredictable and challenging for the continent.”

The AASR analysis reveals that today, agriculture can be a hard sell for young Africans, particularly educated Africans. It points to recent research finding that in many African countries, the more education young people receive, the less likely they are to pursue a career in agriculture. In Ethiopia, for example, only nine percent of youth say they are planning to work in agriculture. (Nigeria was an outlier, with the majority of youth taking a favorable view of agriculture, which could be evidence that aggressive efforts in Nigeria to make agriculture more attractive as a business are paying off.)

“Our analysis revealed that many young Africans seem to view farming and other food production work as drudgery,” said Dr. David Sarfo Ameyaw, the managing editor of the report and AGRA’s head of strategy, monitoring, and evaluation. “They appear deeply skeptical that there are career opportunities anywhere in the agriculture sector.”