المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Dear Jacqueline,

Indeed youth (un)employment is one of the major policy challenges facing Uganda’s economic growth and development, and as you may be aware, Uganda’s Economy heavily relies on the Agricultural sector which employs 59 % of the working population of which 63 % are youth, mostly in rural areas where agriculture is the major economic activity. A number of state and non-state initiatives have been put in place to solve this challenge e.g. the Youth Venture Capital Fund (YVCF) and Youth Livelihood Program (YLP), among others. Despite the interventions, youth unemployment remains a very big challenge currently estimated at 11.1%, which is higher than the national average unemployment rate of 9.4%. In support to Government efforts, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Uganda is providing strategic support for the promotion of decent jobs for youth in the Agricultural sector.

FAO is currently providing technical support to the Government of Uganda in the development of a Strategy for Youth in Agriculture. The strategy is aimed at conveying more logic in different interventions of different actors on youth engagement in rural areas especially in the agricultural sector. The government considers the development of the Youth strategy in Agriculture essential in order to ensure the adequate inclusion of youth priorities in existing large-scale plans for the agricultural sector. For that FAO Uganda has recently employed a National Consultant to steer this process.

But aside from that, we have some interesting stories/articles on decent youth employment ………

FAO’s NEW INTEGRATED COUNTRY APPROACH FOR DECENT RURAL YOUTH EMPLOYMENT TO GIVE HOPE TO YOUTH IN UGANDA

The youth in Uganda will benefit from the current efforts by Government of Uganda and FAO to create descent rural employment in the agriculture sector. FAO's Integrated Country Approach for Decent Rural Youth Employment programme (ICA-DRE) launched in 2015, was designed to support activities relevant to knowledge generation and policy/strategy and capacity strengthening for relevant stakeholders to implement youth employment programmes in the agriculture sector. It will support and contribute to the policy agenda of decent work for young men and women in Uganda’s agriculture sector. The programme is implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD) and the National Planning Authority (NPA). To ensure effective coordination during programme implementation, a Technical Working Group (TWG) was formed to steer the project activities and thus ensure that relevant knowledge is generated on youth employment issues which will be used as a basis for policy and strategic planning and capacity development. The Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries plans to develop a strategy for youth in agriculture as indicated in its Agriculture Sector Strategic Plan (draft) (ASSP) 2015/16-2019/20.

FAO AFRICAN SOLIDARITY TRUST FUND INTERVENTIONS TRANSFORMING LIVES IN UGANDA

Walter Odot’s first two attempts at fish farming in 2011 and 2013 failed miserably and consequently killed his enthusiasm to invest time and his meagre resources in any agricultural activity. Having returned from an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp where he lived for close to twelve years during the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency in Northern Uganda, Odot sought the easy way out – gambling and petty jobs in Lira town – his home district. While the fish farming venture failed due to lack of technical guidance and affordable and good quality feed and fingerlings, Odot and a group of his friends constructed a fish pond, which remained idle until 2015 when the African Solidarity Trust Fund (ASTF) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) funded a project in Uganda on “Promoting Sensitive Agricultural Diversification to Fight Malnutrition and Enhance Youth Employment in Eastern Africa,” and his group was selected for support in fish farming.

“Initially, I organized friends I grew up with in the IDP camp. We constructed a pond and put in 2,000 fish fingerlings but they all died because we didn’t know how to manage the pond. The feed was also expensive and the group members could not raise money to buy feed,” says Odot. With funding from the ASTF, FAO has since January 2015, been implementing fisheries and aquaculture interventions in 6 districts in Uganda. Odot and his friends who hail from Lira district in Northern Uganda, seized the opportunity and re-organized themselves into a formal group of 18 members. They were trained by FAO technical personnel on pond construction and management after which they received 3,000 catfish and 2,000 tilapia fingerlings.

“For the first time, we are optimistic about fish farming because in a very short time of the implementation of the project, we are already seeing results. Our youth who have been idle for years are now engaged. Some of the youth not directly involved in fish farming are earning from pond construction. The challenges in getting quality seed and feed, and proper pond construction and management skills have been addressed. For this, we are very grateful to FAO. We request for more support so that these activities can be scaled up across the district and beyond,” says the District Fisheries Officer for Lira District. The group expects to harvest 2500 kgs of fish that will earn them about US $6,000. They started harvesting their fish in March 2016, and agreed to share part of the profit from the sale of the fish and use the rest of the money to expand with two more ponds.

This support has not only benefited small farmer/youth groups, but also schools such as the Lira Integrated School where fish farming is a taught subject for all students, and the fish provides nutrition for the school goers. While the school has been carrying out fish farming for years, before this support the productivity had not been as high as after the FAO intervention. Three modern hatcheries in Lira and Soroti districts, aimed at producing quality, accessible and affordable fish seed for farmers were also supported and have now boosted fish seed production, which has been a challenge for a long time.

“We were gambling with fish farming. We lacked knowledge. Our hatchery was as good as non-existent, but what is coming out of our ponds now is inspiring. Our student’s morale to work on the farm has been boosted because they see returns.”

One of the biggest challenges discouraging farmers and especially the youth from venturing into fish farming was the lack of accessible and affordable fish feed. This is now being addressed by supplying feed mills to farmers and enterprises to enable them produce feed.

HELPING LAKE ALBERT YOUTH THROUGH CAGE FISH FARMING

Fishing is a major economic activity and a major source of livelihood for communities around Lake Albert in Uganda. Butiaba landing site, along the shores of Lake Albert in Buliisa District in Western Uganda, is not any different. There are male and female youth who rely mainly on fish catches from the lake for their livelihoods. As the population at this landing site continues to increase, there is a growing pressure on this lake shared by Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The lake is over fished on both sides of the border with little control of illegal fishing. As a result, fish stocks have significantly reduced – so much that the fisher folk spend days and nights fishing on the lake and catch very small fish which they sell to factories that produce fish and chicken feed. This leaves many youth idle and unemployed.

With funding from the ASTF, FAO has engaged the youth in the communities around the lake in cage fish farming in zoned areas on Lake Albert. This was prompted by the fact that the targeted youth did not have land to practice aquaculture. They were organized in groups of twenty members each and trained on cage fish farming by FAO technical personnel, and given ten cages, fish fingerlings and feed to cater for the first phase. The cage fish farming interventions on Lake Albert are under a cost sharing basis with the groups in a four phase process i.e. 75:25, 50:50, 25: 75 by FAO and the groups. In the final phase the groups will be meeting 100 percent of the costs of the activity. This move is aimed at creating ownership for sustainability after the project ends – an arrangement that the members of the two groups agreed to and are in support of.

Oscar Uvon Mohamed, a member of BUFITA, says that he had abandoned fishing to ply the ‘boda boda’ (motorcycle taxi) trade because there was no more fish in the lake. Now he looks forward to the first harvest of the fish in the cages for his group. “We plan to sell our fish once matured, and we will use the money to acquire more cages. I am also saving my earnings so that in future I can buy my own cages and continue fish farming because the money I earn from ‘boda boda’ is not enough,” says Uvon.

The Fisheries Officer for Buliisa district concurs with the timeliness of this support in engaging the mostly young men and women who have been unemployed. Under the project, more groups will be supported under the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Plan that seeks to make Butiaba an aquaculture park that make fish feed because all the raw materials required are within, have a hatchery to produce fish seed, and be able to restock Lake Albert.

I hope these are useful information in the discourse for ‘Youth – feeding the future’.

Best regards,

OKELLO A. A. Beatrice (Ms)

Senior Programme Officer/Manager

Uganda Country Office

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations