FAO seeks to empower youth in agriculture through ICTs to create employment in Uganda

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is working with the Ugandan Agriculture Ministry to develop a policy for youth to be involved in agricultural value chain.This was said by the FAO Country Representative for Uganda - Alhaji Muhamad Jallow who was quoted by the New Vision.  

In Uganda, 79% of youth live in rural areas where poverty is relatively high and agriculture is the major economic activity. 

The government's plan, in collaboration with FAO, is to help the youth have access to finance, tech entrepreneurship skills and promote ICT in agriculture.

Mobile finance and ICTs can have a great impact on agricultural value chains as farmers can have easy access to credit and crop information thanks to satellites and drones.

The use of ICTs in Uganda has been covered on this platform.

In a related story, the e-Agriculture covered the decision of the Governement of Uganda to use Drones to enhance food security. Drones can provide more accurate, up-to-date information on crops being grown in different places and this can give farmers early warning of problems anywhere in their fields.

Another example on the use of ICTs in Uganda is the AgroMarketDay mobile application that enables farmers to sell their produce directly to buyers. Thanks to Agro MarketDay, farmers can access market information, farm inputs and tools, agronomy information and farmers trading.

According to the Millennium Development Goals report by UNDP, there are approximately 600,000 -700,000 new entrants in the labour market annually in Uganda, of which 95% are youths.

Youths are the best age group to target for ICT training and investment projects as they are growing with ICT tools and the use of these tools in agriculture makes the sector more attractive to them.

Source : New Vision