Pulse.ng : Agro stakeholders urge African leaders to prioritise youth-focused policies

By Felicia Imohimi

Stakeholders in the agriculture sector have urged African leaders to prioritise youth focused policies in order to ensure sustainable food production and nutrition security in the continent.

The stakeholders made the call at the Sahel Scholars’ Conference held via zoom with the theme “The Strategic Role of the African Youth in Driving Solutions for Sustainable Food Security.”

Temi Adegoroye, Managing Partner, Sahel Consulting Nutrition and Agriculture Limited, who spoke on the theme, urged African leaders and policy makers to prioritise youth focused policies that would help to scale activities of agro-businesses.

Adegoroye said there was need for the right environment to enable organisations to thrive; so, that more young people could embrace technological driven opportunities that existed within the food ecosystem in Africa.

He said with technological strategies, the right support system opportunities were bound in Africa food ecosystem.

“There is so much opportunities that are being presented through technology to African youth to address challenges that we have in the food system but we need to do more.

“By 2050, we are going to have about 2 billion people; we are struggling to feed ourselves at the moment; how can we be able to feed that population?

“Therefore, we need young people to come on board and take the driver’s seat.’’

Adegoroye identified African continent as the leading producer of most value chain crops like cocoa, cashew, cassava, among others; yet most countries in the continent like Nigeria and others were unable to be self-sufficient in food production.

He attributed the challenges to poor harvest, improper handling of produce, post-harvest losses, lack of processing, finance, talents gap, storage facilities, devastating effects of climate change in food ecosystem, gender inequality, infrastructure, regional trade dynamics, war among others.

“We need more youth entrepreneurs in driver seat; we need more youths in financial inclusion and ensure that small scale producers, small and medium enterprises have access to digital financial services.

“We need to build market linkages and ensure technological involvement across the food production from planting to harvest and processing by engaging the youths to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.

“With technology in place across the food production chain, we will be able to unlock the opportunities within the food ecosystem andy ensure that we produce the food that we can eat and export to other parts of the world,” he said.

Patrick Tognisso, Chief Operation Officer (COO), myAgro and Board Member, Sahel Consulting Nutrition and Agriculture Limited, said focus on youths in Africa should not be on consumables rather on production and value creation.

Tognisso said 50 per of population in Sub Sahara was young people less than 30 years to 35 years, adding that the continent remained predominantly rural and 65 per cent resided in rural areas.

According to him, agriculture represents 50 per cent in most of the Sub- Sahara countries.

He said that food security, nutrition and better nutrition entailed improving productivity, health, education and ultimately economic growth.

“Africa will increase 800 million workers in the next 40 years and these workers will be mostly young and from rural environment.

“So, the future of employment and of course, food security will depend on the ability of these young workers for you to create jobs, find job and generate value in the agriculture space,’’ he said.

Mr Olawande Ayodele, Minister of State for Youth, challenged youths on production and value creation skills.

Ayodele said that Nigeria and other African continent were well endowed with rich potential and opportunities yet untapped.

He said the problem of Nigeria and other African countries was that they always thought of problems rather than preaching solutions.

Citing example with Nigeria, he said that nothing stopped the country from having a product from each of the 774 Local Government Areas to generate income.

According to him, patronage is needed from government and other like minds to chart a way forward and encourage universities students to utilise their talents to generate job opportunities and wealth through agriculture.

Like places where palmwine is tapped, if there is cottage or processing industry like bottling company, palmwine can be packaged and marketed within and outside the country.

“We have opportunities; we have challenges in the continent because we focus on things we are not supposed to focus on.

“Nothing stops us from having cottage and production industries in every local government area to process all raw materials for marketing,” he said. (NAN)