Agriculture and Food Safety in Africa: Why are Youth Not at the Forefront?

By Doreen Nanyonga
With payments from the ICPAC Climate Change Technical Working Team
  A  video clip has lately been distributing on social media sites of a girl protesting the representation of young people (or lack of) in the agriculture industry. Throughout a  CNBC Africa Special Online Forum  on the difficulties and chances for youth work in farming that was held in Kigali Rwanda on 20 – 21 August 2018, the young Zambian medical doctor/farmer, showed a duplicate of an agriculture publication with a picture of an old woman and asked the audience, 
  If you show this to a young person, a girl like me and state to them, go into agriculture, are they going to go into it? Absolutely, not!”.  
 Her argument was, to make the agriculture market extra attractive to youngsters, policy manufacturers and partners need to make it  sexy , by publishing pictures of young good-looking males and females. Although her use words sexy   is contentious, her point is loud and clear. Youth need a place at the ‘table’- a possibility to play an energetic duty in the growth and growth of the agriculture market and eventually in the battle versus food instability, poor nutrition and (young people) joblessness on the continent. 
 The  United Nations  specifies youth as those individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 years. Around the world, young people represent roughly 24 % of the working poor. According to  ILO , today’s young people are one of the most informed ever, but they face a variety of difficulties in the labor market which need an identified and concerted activity in time [1] 
 The farming industry is the main source of food and revenue for Africans and offers as much as 60 % of all tasks on the continent [2] Food production in Sub-Saharan Africa needs to raise by 60 % over the next 15 years in order to feed the expanding populace. However, countless research studies indicate the truth that, globally, there is an expanding trouble of aging farming neighborhoods. An indicator that much less young people are venturing right into farming as a career. In Africa, youth are continually abandoning agriculture and opting to migrate from rural areas to cities searching for employment. This has actually left a vacuum cleaner that is most likely to result in future shortage of farmers in addition to decreased manufacturing and performance degrees, as the old generation retires. In terms of food safety, with the decreasing levels of food manufacturing, increasing populace degrees and transforming wealth and consumption patterns; will there suffice food manufacturing to feed the generations to find? [3] 
 A study by the Globe Bank [4] suggests that lots of youngsters in Africa recognize little of the opportunities and possible in farming today. When inquired about the most effective and worst ways to earn a living in their neighborhood, the young people hardly ever mentioned farming as the most effective (although not the worst); defining great work as those that regulate great pay and respect, two attributes not commonly associated with farming under the problems most familiar to young Africans. Although farming is the most prompt methods of catalyzing financial growth and employment for youths, to transform this, it needs to shift rapidly from its present condition as an’  line of work of last resource and reduced efficiency  to one of technological dynamism and recognized opportunity. 
 Difficulties faced by the young people  A 2011 report by Feighery et al. [4], revealed that young people face a number of barriers to accomplishing (and adding to) food security, among them: manufacturing barriers such as absence of accessibility to offered land, lack of agricultural modern technologies and farming techniques required to boost overall manufacturing, lack of knowledge to effectively use the food readily available, and lack of passion in seeking farming as a career. They likewise encounter income generation obstacles such as illiteracy, training and market accessibility, and the fact that their movement to metropolitan areas does not produce adequate income to preserve house food protection. 
  Means ahead   Ignoring youth involvement in farming poses a threat to the capacity of the sector to fulfill the current and future demands of the swiftly growing populace. There is a need for concerted efforts in taking care of the current state of affairs in order to protect the future of the young people, the agriculture sector and the food protection circumstance in Africa. This calls for; 
 Improving farming’s image specifically in the media. Use media, ICT and social media sites to improve agriculture’s image amongst the young people. This calls for producing understanding amongst the young people on the progressive, profitable, ingenious and considerate capacity of the farming industry. Likewise, enable sharing of info and experiences between youth; 
 Reinforcing farming education and learning at all levels. Constructing the capability of youth in farming will certainly offer an avenue for them to get expertise and abilities that can be made use of to improve food safety. Activities such as placing agriculture on college educational program, convening agriculture associated experience sharing online forum, and having young people champions in agriculture need to be adopted; 
 Promoting accessibility to effective resources such as land and credit report in order to attract them into the sector as a way of boosting production and productivity; 
 Raising youth access to agriculture related info on farming methods, offered markets, environment and weather condition data to name a few; 
 Offering possibilities for youth to take part in agribusiness business and linkages to private sector and development companies. 