Drivers of youth engagement in agriculture: Insights from Guatemala, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda
Drivers of youth engagement in agriculture: Insights from Guatemala, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda

Author: Babu, Suresh Chandra

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2021-03-31

Total Pages: 29

ISBN-13:

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Engaging burgeoning youth populations in developing country agriculture is seen as an important strategy toward effective, efficient, and sustainable food system transformation. Yet the policy, institutional, technological, and capability barriers and ways to overcome them for successful participation of youth in agriculture are not fully understood. We use a conceptual framework that identifies key pathways to prosperity for youth and classifies contextual and driving factors that contribute to the success of youth engagement in agriculture. The framework comprises four broad categories of strategic interventions: policy and socioeconomic environment; institutional; technological/business infrastructure; and individual skills and capacities. In the context of this framework, we then present insights from cases of youth participation in agriculture in five countries: Guatemala, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda. The countries and cases were purposively selected as part of ongoing research on youth engagement in agriculture. Policies and strategies play an important role in creating an enabling environment for youth engagement in agriculture, including by fostering transparency and accountability in the policy system and promoting youth engagement in the private sector through agricultural extension and other services. Institutions and intermediaries provide financial support, training, and access to market for youth entrepreneurs. Support in these areas should be strengthened. Systems approaches, such as multi-stakeholder platforms, provide holistic support to young agripreneurs (entrepreneurs in agriculture), but require effective coordination. Similarly, information and communication technologies can play a facilitating role by providing platforms to network and receive updated market information but need to be significantly scaled up. Individual capacities can drive youth engagement in agriculture and agripreneurship but must continue to be built up through expanded education and training on technical and functional skills. As policymakers and program managers search for interventions that can promote youth involvement in agriculture in their own countries, the insights from the five countries examined that are presented in this paper may be useful for identifying context-specific challenges and pathways to successful youth engagement in agriculture in their own countries. The framework presented here can be applied to study youth engagement issues in any country or in sub-national, decentralized contexts to generate evidence to guide the design of youth-in-agriculture development programs. There is a need to support, strengthen, and implement the driving factors identified in this paper for expanding youth engagement in agriculture.

Empowering young agri-entrepreneurs to invest in agriculture and food systems
Empowering young agri-entrepreneurs to invest in agriculture and food systems

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2020-10-14

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 9251333424

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Measures that empower young agri-entrepreneurs should be a key component of a sustainable development-centred investment promotion strategy. The very realization of future generations’ food security, the sustainable transformation of food systems and the combat against unemployment and distress migration all depend upon the successful implementation of strategies that make the agri-food sector more attractive for the youth. This, in turn, requires smart policy responses that will help young investors overcome the numerous barriers they face – access to finance, land, information and technical services, to name but the most crucial ones.Since 2017, FAO has provided support to African and South-East Asian countries in identifying key challenges for young agri-entrepreneurs and good practices through participatory capacity analyses and strategic planning processes which were carried out with, and for the youth. This report summarizes the main findings and lessons learned from FAO’s work with eleven African countries – Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea Conakry, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia and Uganda. It identifies key challenges and policy recommendations regarding youth’s access to finance; land; technical services and information; as well as the engagement of youth in policy-making processes. The report also contains a set of five overall key policy recommendations for the empowerment of young agri-entrepreneurs.

Social Franchising
Social Franchising

Author: I. Alon

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-10-03

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 1137455845

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Social franchising represents a third generation form of franchising development, after trade-name and business-format franchising. At the intersection of social enterprise and micro finance literatures, this book reviews a variety of social franchising formats across a number of developing countries.

Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa
Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa

Author: Valerie Mueller

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-11-28

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0192587315

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Sub-Saharan Africa's rural population is growing rapidly, and more young people are entering the labour market every year. This raises serious policy questions. Can rural economies absorb enough job seekers? Could better-educated youth transform Africa's rural economies by adopting new technologies and starting businesses? Are policymakers responding to the youth employment challenge? Or will there be widespread unemployment, social instability, and an exodus to cities and abroad? Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa: Beyond Stylized Facts uses survey data to build a nuanced understanding of the constraints and opportunities facing rural youth in Africa. Addressing the questions of Africa's rural youth is currently hampered by major gaps in our knowledge and stylized facts from cross-country trends or studies that do not focus on the core issues. Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa takes a different approach, drawing on household and firm surveys from selected African countries with an explicit focus on rural youth. It argues that a balance between alarm and optimism is warranted, and that Africa's "youth bulge" is not an unprecedented challenge. Jobs in rural areas are limited, but agriculture is transforming and youth are participating, adopting new technologies and running businesses. Governments have adopted youth employment as a priority, but policies often do not address the specific needs of rural populations. Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa emphasizes that by going beyond stylized facts and drawing on more granular analysis, we can design effective policies to turn Africa's youth problem into an opportunity for rural transformation.

The Future of Rural Youth in Developing Countries
The Future of Rural Youth in Developing Countries

Author: Collectif

Publisher: OECD

Published: 2018-06-06

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 9264302018

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Rural youth constitute over half of the youth population in developing countries and will continue to increase in the next 35 years. Without rural transformation and green industrialisation happening fast enough to create more wage employment in a sustainable manner, the vast majority of rural youth in developing countries have little choice but to work in poorly paid and unstable jobs or to migrate. As household dietary pattern is changing, new demands by a rising middle class for diversified and processed foods are creating new job opportunities in food-related manufacturing and services. Agro-food industries are labour-intensive and can create jobs in rural areas as well as ensure food security. Yet the employment landscape along the agro-food value chains is largely underexploited. This study looks at local actions and national policies that can promote agro-food value chains and other rural non-farm activities using a youth employment lens.

Informal Economy and Sustainable Development Goals
Informal Economy and Sustainable Development Goals

Author: A Vinodan

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2024-10-07

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1837539820

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What role does the informal economy have to play in SDG implementation? The chapters collected here by a range of scholars explore this question in detail; examining case studies and presenting empirical evidence based on both qualitative and quantitative assessment.

Rural poverty analysis
Rural poverty analysis

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2021-10-26

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9251349681

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Reducing rural poverty is a key objective of FAO. To achieve this goal, the Organization must reach the poor and the extremely poor in rural areas, analysing their needs and aspirations and providing effective guidance for the design of policies and investments that foster inclusive and sustainable development. This guide was developed to strengthen the Organization’s work on rural poverty reduction and inclusivity over the coming years. It provides key information to measure poverty, characterize rural populations, and identify their constraints to target them more accurately. The guide includes five chapters. Chapter 1 explains the structure, content, and use of the guide, as well as its intended users and objectives. Chapter 2 discusses how poverty is measured, focusing on the different indicators that can be used, depending on the context, specific circumstances, data availability and policy objectives. Chapter 3 provides guidance on how to build a poverty profile and produce poverty maps to understand who the poor are and where they are located. Chapter 4 focuses on the targeting process, on various targeting techniques and on how to choose one over another to ensure that programmes and projects effectively combat poverty, particularly in rural areas. Finally, Chapter 5 sets the next steps for the development of further analytical guides. The various chapters provide an overview of both widely used and emerging techniques in poverty analysis, focusing on quantitative methods, and giving constant attention to FAO’s areas of work and the challenges posed by operating in rural areas.

Enabling Agri-entrepreneurship and Innovation
Enabling Agri-entrepreneurship and Innovation

Author: Catherine Chan

Publisher: CABI

Published: 2017-02-14

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1780647751

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Agricultural entrepreneurs in conflict and post-conflict regions face special challenges; not just everyday personal risks, but also the difficulties of building small businesses when real or threatened violence can disrupt business growth cycles and economic security. Alongside establishing secure institutions, building a secure economy is rightly seen as the best way for conflict-torn regions to establish a peaceful future. But current agricultural entrepreneurship training and development starts from an assumption of peace, meaning that it is not always fit for purpose. The result is sub-optimal program design and inefficient use of resources. A product of a collaboration of experts in the fields of agri-business, agricultural marketing, and international development, this book gives officials and agencies developing entrepreneurship programs the practical real-life examples they need.

Empowerment in agricultural value chains: Mixed methods evidence from the Philippines
Empowerment in agricultural value chains: Mixed methods evidence from the Philippines

Author: Hazel J. Malapit

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2019-10-30

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13:

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Women’s participation and empowerment in value chains are goals that concern many development organizations, but there has been limited systematic, rigorous research to track these goals between and within value chains (VCs). We use the survey-based project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) to measure women’s and men’s empowerment in the abaca, coconut, seaweed, and swine VCs in the Philippines. Results show that most women and men in all four VCs are disempowered, but unlike in many other countries, Filipino women in this sample are generally as empowered as men. Pro-WEAI results suggest that respect within the household and attitudes about gender-based violence (GBV) are the largest sources of disempowerment for both women and men, followed by control over use of income and autonomy in income-related decisions. Excessive workload and lack of group membership are other important sources of disempowerment, with some variation across VCs and nodes along VCs. Across all four VCs, access to community programs is associated with higher women’s empowerment, and access to extension services and education are associated with higher men’s empowerment. Our results show that, despite the egalitarian gender norms in the Philippines, persistent gender stereotypes influence men’s and women’s empowerment and VC participation.