Agriculture is a primal sector to generate income to the growing population and a major contributor to the GDP in Africa. Africa is known as young continent due to the fact that it has the largest number of young population in the world. This young people are energetic, have a fresh mind and innovative spirit. They are ambitious and willing to take initiative to get integrated in development process.
Young people are the foundation for the development of the agriculture sector and future sustainability. They have a creative spirit, they are determined and able to take risks. They engage and adapt easily to the management of programs and projects. They are thus more open to training, to the acquisition of new skills and to the improvement of competences.
Africa still have a big number of young people with a negative perception of agriculture and find it difficult to engage in productive agricultural activities. This negative perception is amplified by a weak accessibility of information and communication. It is necessary to capitalize and disseminate the success stories of young people that engage in agriculture so that many can learn from examples. PAFO seeks to conduct a continental study on: “Young African Agripreneurs: Success Story and Scaling Up Lessons and Innovations” to identify and profile success stories of young Africans (men and women) operating in agriculture for scaling up lessons and innovations.
PAFO believes that lessons can be learned better from good examples than from failures of the system to better involve young people. From the identified profiles, a synthesis can be made to identify the common characteristics that make these young farmers/Agripreneurs successful in terms of internal (personal) characteristics and external support systems.
The study will also help to raise awareness on the needs to be taken into account either to achieve PAFO’s mission or to support its advocacy vis-à-vis regional and global institutions. Besides, success stories can also be compiled and presented as business models to other young people who see no hope in engaging in agricultural activities as a career.
Edition: October 2022
Author: PAFO
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