Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

In response to question 2 on examples of existing post-capacity development and the success story; In Nigeria specifically Kano state we had a series of capacity development initiatives, fundamentally, number trainings organized and run by "Kano State agricultural and rural development authority (KNARDA)" from 2003-2011. During this period, KNARDA initiated a project "Management training plot (MTP)". This project aimed at boosting productivity in Maize production. Farmers were trained, agricultural inputs were given at subsidized rate ( fertilizer =N1000/bag, seed = 500/10kg ......). In Bunkure LG of Kano State we have 267 farmers' groups, and each group constitutes of at least 25 members 70% of which were youths. In addition, each group entitled to 45 bags of fertilizer, 20 bags of which were meant for the cultivation of 2 hectares to be managed collectively by the group members, while the 25 bags were for the individual group members. The 2 hectares were used as the MTP Plot, where the extension agent facilitates the activities in the MTP plots. Farmers were trained on good agricultural practices and marketing strategies in maize production. Farmers were well capacitated, but unfortunately, due to lack of followup and continuity as a result of changes in government policies the project is no longer visible. If that project (MTP) been sustained till present, Am sure Kano state alone can produce maize beyond National demands. At this juncture, am arguing government /NGOS to strengthen their efforts in youth capacity building and it's sustainability for brighter future.

Dear Justin and all,

Thanks for putting up this briliant idea up.

I think basicially, what the challenges are borders on

(1)The lack of follow up after the capacity building excercise, like coming up with some post-activities.

(2) The inability to address the key issues that were raised by all the stakeholders durying the capacity development initiatives.

(3)Inability to implement some of the recommendations on the key challenges that were proffered.

(4) Funds Funds Funds! This is a general challenge but the honest truth in my opinion is, lack of access to funding for small start-ups and small holder young farmers. The capacity building initiatives is a brilliant and laudable idea but no matter how great the idea is, if their is no access to funding,then the excercise won't have much impact.

Dear all;

1. For me the challenge of capacity development in youth agriculture sustaining is the enabling environment to implement the theoretical and practical capacity development (these enabling could be financial source, access to credit, access to land, and other endowments) which are the basic source to implement the aptitude undertaken.
2. In most cases creating a form of business co-operatives can have a chance to exist with 3 to 5 youth engaging in supply chain; for instance family poultry and dairy small co-operative business in Ethiopia; yet this has its own constraints because youth similarity of interest and thoughts of the business.
3. The problem in youth agricultural participation in Africa is not only a capacity gap on business incubation or innovation system but the start-up engine to the initial. Creating profitable agricultural production system can lead to diffuse skills and knowledge to the low concentrated district and PA as its own innovation and system development.
4. There are technologies that can enhance development with scaling out all it package and with the innovation adopted it for each assumed youth character.
5. Yes indeed; because it can facilitate and ease the transformation of scaling out technologies with an accelerated velocity for the implementation and success to the supply chain with filling the information and demand gaps.

Is there a role for modern technologies, including Information and Communication Technologies, in sustaining capacity development initiatives? Yes. Modern technologies plays an important role in sustaining capacity development initiatives. For instance in the project am currently working on in the East Mamprusi district of the Northern Region of Ghana, we have adopted the use of video screening in reaching out to communities and educating them on the use of improved seed, comparing the performance of farmer saved seeds to that of the improve varieties and good agronomic practices. This gives us the opportunity to educate many farmers within a short period. Also, the use of Information and Communication Technology in information dissemination via mobile phones messages to some farmer’s areas such as weather forecast and prices of produce in the local market will help the farmers in planning their activities.

English translation below

- Susciter l'intérêt des jeunes à participer au développement en général

- Susciter l'intérêt en eux à participer au développement agricole par des motivations tangibles,

- Empowering les jeunes femmes et homme à tirer profit du patrimoine existant

- Renforcement de leurs capacité par des coaching in-situ par des professionnels présentant les meilleurs trains technique de production, de valorisation , de commercialisation et de communication et en fin par des aides en matière de matériel agricole adéquat, et des intrants adaptées.

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• Promote interest of young people to participate in development in general
• awaken interest in them to participate in agricultural development with tangible motivations,
• empowering young men and women to realize profit from the available patrimony
• Reinforcing their capabilities by in situ training carried out by professionals who present the best trends in production, adding value, commercialization and communications techniques, and finally with help in terms of appropriate agricultural equipment and suitable inputs.

Hi All,

Thanks for this great forum and interesting discussions. I would like to voice out regarding question 2;

2. What are the examples of existing post-capacity development sustainability initiatives for youth in agriculture in Africa? What works and what does not? Are there any success stories and good practices that can be shared?

At Agriterra we are working with agricultural cooperatives in Africa towards building their capacities throughout the whole value-chains (rice, maize, coffee, maize etc). Our initiatives are also now more directed to young farmers in ensuring they are part of the cooperatives. In Kenya as country focus, in particular, we advocate for youth councils. A youth council brings together young members supplying their produces to the cooperatives and non-members who are interested in getting into agriculture. We ensure that they get organised by helping them come up with clear roadmaps on how to increase productivity, how to attract more members into agriculture and some are trained as TOTs and potential extension officers.

In further attracting these young people into agriculture, the cooperatives provide finance (loans) based on the produce or savings with them. Some are allowed to form groups even though they haven’t started supplying to the cooperative. These group loans cushion the likelihood/risk of loan default.

We also undertake peer to peer exchange for the most improved young farmers. These enables them to see the best practices elsewhere which eventually becomes an added input to them.

The main challenge is to see that management (and boards) of these organisations consistently support the young farmers and not see them as threats towards leadership positions. We so far work with 18 cooperatives in Kenya. 5 of them have operational and or improved youth councils. Our focus is to ensure that we have young farmers having a single voice under a youth council national confederation of cooperatives. Viva!

Another un-attended CD area is the youth capacity in agricultural science within the context of impending effects of climate change. I am not aware if any African university has even looked at revising their curricuale to address new issues due to warming, shifting rain and temperature patterns etc etc. The (agricultural) science being taught and practiced in Africa is reductionistand compartmentalized in nature and needs to re-orient to newer models of inter and trasndisciplinary science as opposed to multi-disciplinary organization of universities. In addition, peer review capacity is extremely lacking in Africa.

We at ICRAF had proposed a skeleton of an intiatives to African Academy of Science back in 2015, but it did not materialize so far.

1. The biggest challenges youth in Africa face after going through youth-specific capacity development initiatives in agriculture is the employability with a reasonable level of compensation and availability of humane work conditions. Youth trained in agriculture looks at other fields, such as businesses, IT, etc and does not find agriculture very "glamorous". Part of the reason is that most agricultural raw materials are not truly costed, and hence the small margins, specifically at production stage.

3. In terms of post-capacity development support, there is a big scope for youth e-networks, communities of practice, innovation platforms, etc that can keep them aware of emerging opportunities and sharing and co-learning about how to solve such challenges through experience sharing. I think placing youth representation in agricultural policy and implementation fora can also provide country specific solutions by identifying and addressing barriers.

4. In Africa, like many other developing countries, policies alone remain inadequate. Availability of policy is no guarantee that the policies will get implemented in letter and spirit. Probably once idea could be encouraging large businesses to experiment with youth led initiatives, such as agribusiness incubator programs. Governments could, for example, provide tax rebate for business engaging youth.

5. There is a large untapped potential for universities, governments, development organizations, and donors to work together to launch e-learning courses, Massive Open Online Courses, learning repositories, and providing space for virtual interactions. There is a large amount of knowledge on both successes and failures in empowering and engaging youth in agriculture, but this knowledge is scattered and could be shared through use of ICT. ICT could also facilitate match-making between capacitated youth and youth demand.

Africa continues to face food shortages and despite good arable land and conducive climate.

It is in public knowledge that Africa has the youngest population worldwide- ages between 15-35 years

So what are the problem and what are possible solutions.

The problems are many and some complex, however I can point to the following as key ones

1. Continous reliance on rain fed agricultural farming- climate changes and unreliable rains .

2. Reducing yields per unit/Hectare in the last 20 years or so and growing costs increasing at the same time making farming a loss making venture.

3. Inadequate Government policies to address challenges in Agriculture.

4. Rapidly increasing population- leading to more food consumption.

5. Post-harvest losses in some cases up to 40% of the harvested produce.

6.Inability to practice good agricultural practices eg adding manure or compost to farms, crop rotation

7. Poor linkages between Agricultural research a organizations and their findings with the people involved in agricultural activities.

8. Subdivision of arable land as part of cultural practice of land inheritance and property development in arable areas....

Solutions to these challenges in the course of the week.

English translation below

Bonjour à tous,

La question numéro 3 taraudait l'esprit de tout le monde et mérite des discussions approfondis afin de dégager les problèmes que rencontre les jeunes dans le domaine agricole. Je remercie le facilitateur de la discussion de ce rappel.

Les jeunes ont besoin dans la phase postérieure au renforcement des capacités des soutiens allant des formations aux financements de leurs activités agricoles. Nous savons tous que les jeunes ne sont pas motivés dans le domaine agricole. Les causes de ces démotivations sont entre autres: l'infertilité de terres agricoles dûes aux changements climatiques, le mauvais prix de vente sur le marché des produits agricoles. Pour que les jeunes s’entraident et renforcent ainsi leurs compétences et leurs capacités dans le domaine de l'agriculture, il faut créer des centres de recyclages, des centres de formation. A cet effet, il faut renforcer des capacités dans le secteur public et au sein des communautés afin d'améliorer le développement des entreprises et l’amélioration de leur gestion en vue de promouvoir la commercialisation des produits agricoles. Le FAO devrait dispenser des formations dans les domaines de l’agro-industrie et de l’apport de valeur ajoutée au bénéfice des petits exploitants agricoles, la priorité doit être accordée à cet égard aux femmes, aux jeunes et aux personnes physiquement handicapées. La formation des entrepreneurs ruraux par comité, dont des entrepreneurs opérant dans la transformation et la commercialisation des produits agricoles, doit être au centre de cette philosophie faisant de l’agriculture une véritable aubaine(le cas d'arachide, le sésame, le niébé, le mil et le manioc). Les opérateurs du secteur privé doivent recevoir des informations sur les stratégies de développement des marchés, ainsi que sur les possibilités d’investissement dans le secteur de l’agriculture, et notamment dans la commercialisation des intrants agricoles et la transformation des produits agricoles, la formation et la vente des produits agricoles.il faut aussi former les jeunes aux pratiques modernes de transformation des produits agricoles, et d’autres connaissances et compétences dans l’apport de valeur ajoutée. Les capacités des responsables et des membres des associations locales de commerçants doivent également être renforcées non seulement pour promouvoir l’esprit d’entreprise, mais aussi pour garantir la gestion efficace des marchés et des centres agro-industriels, favorisant ainsi la durabilité des avantages des produits agricole.

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Good day to everyone

Question No.3 engages everyone’s interest and deserves to be discussed in depth in order to bring out the problems that confront the youth in the agricultural sector.  I give thanks to the facilitator of this discussion for this reminder.

During the post capacity reinforcement phase, young people need support when moving from training to funding their agricultural activities. We all know that young people are not motivated by the agricultural sector. The causes of this lack of motivation are among others: the infertility of agricultural land due to climate change, and the bad selling prices of agricultural products in the market. For the young to help each other and in this way improve their knowledge and ability in the agricultural sector, it will be necessary to create recycling and training centres.  For that, it will be necessary to improve public sector and community abilities in order to improve business development and management with the object of promoting the sale of agricultural products. FAO should provide training in the areas of agro-industry and adding value for the benefit of small farms, with priority being given in this respect to women, the young and handicapped people The training of rural business people in committees, formed of the entrepreneurs operating in the transformation and commercialization of agricultural products, should be at the centre of this philosophy, making agriculture a real opportunity (the case of peanuts, sesame, cowpea, millet and cassava). The operators in the private sector should receive information regarding market development strategies, as well as on investment possibilities in the agricultural sector, in particular in the commercialization and transformation of agricultural products, training and sales. It is also necessary to train the youth in the modern practices of agricultural products’ transformation and in other knowledge and competences in the adding of value. The capabilities of those responsible and of the members of the local retail associations must equally be reinforced not only for promoting commercial instincts, but also for guaranteeing the efficient management of the markets and agro-industrial centers, in favor of the continuity of the advantages of agricultural products.