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| Nteranya Sanginga, Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Courtesy of IITA |
IBADAN, Nigeria, Nov 23 2015 (IPS) -
Finding a way to allow youth to contribute their natural and ample
energies to productive causes is increasingly the touchstone issue that
will determine future prosperity.
It is a tragic irony that today’s youth, despite being the most educated generation ever, struggle to be included.
That’s
true in advanced countries. But it is even more true in Africa, where
almost two-thirds of the jobless are young adults, whose ranks swell by
10 to 12 million new members each year. The challenge is staggering in
scale: Today there are 365 million Africans aged 15 to 35, and over the
next 20 years that figure will double.
There is no magic wand. It is youth themselves who must find a solution. Everyone
else – governments, international organizations, the private sector,
social groups and parents – has a huge stake in their success and so
must not stand in the way. Normally one hears about the need to help
cast in elaborate theories based on the need for redistribution. But the
truth is, we need a step change.
That’s the spirit the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is adopting with our “
agripreneur”
coaching programmes. These aim to use self-help groups so that people
can indeed help themselves. As I bluntly told a group of youth in
Uganda, we will provide support in the form of technology, knowledge and
advocacy, but the real activity has to be done by themselves. Another
message was: “be aggressive.”
It is well known that Africa is a
vast land of family farmers, many living in rural areas and regularly
struggling with poverty and hunger. Figures can also be easily made to
show how most family farms are exercises in subsistence, and don’t
always succeed without external help.
Family farming is a way of
life, to be sure. But that does not mean, when you really think about
it, that it cannot be done as a business. Doing so would represent a
change, but the time has come. Making agriculture a commercial trade
offers a set of new tools to entice talented youth to a sector we all
know they tend to run away from.
As Akinwumi Adesina, formerly
Nigeria’s agriculture minister and now the president of the African
Development Bank, likes to say, “Africa’s future millionaires and
billionaires will make their money from agriculture.”
And it is
quite likely that youth, being in a proverbial rush, will accelerate the
transformations that will lead to better lives than a mad rush to
cities where employment prospects aren’t keeping pace with urban
population. Moreover, agriculture has been the weak link in terms of
productivity growth across the continent – that means there is an
enormous upside to doing it better.
Knowledge needs pollinators.
While extension services are excellent and should be upgraded, young
people are natural communicators when they think something is cool and
useful. That’s what agriculture has to be.
IITA’s
agripreneur campaign hinges on our version of a Silicon Valley
hackathon.
Incubators are created to allow youth to learn and exchange ideas of a
practical nature – about how to keep accounts, new crops and farming
techniques, the myriad possibilities of agricultural value chains that
include roles for seed traders, food processors, weather forecasters,
insurance salespeople, marketing specialists.
One of our
agripreneur
“interns” told me that what he took away was that success is not in
fact all down to money. An enterprise really needs ideas, of course, and
the ability to plan.
To be clear, his enthusiasm – as so many of
our alumni say – was about the possibility of enterprise. Call it
agribusiness. Agricultural commodity value chains provide just that, a
series of transactional opportunities that work to improve efficiency
for all and reward the talented. This is a major catalyst for youth.
After all, it opens the door for the professionalization of agriculture.
To
be sure, the agribusiness model crucially requires inclusive efforts to
make sure credit is available to youth, to assure that gender equity
becomes an operational assumption rather than just a goal, and a host of
public goods including scientific research. Yet it begins with a
changed mind set.
People must learn how to apply for a loan.
Bankers always say they wish to fund on the basis of a business plan
rather than collateral. It is time to put that to the test. IITA’s focus
on
agripreneurs is a well-placed bet on the idea that nobody learns faster than youth.
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