Across Africa, young people are already shaping how food is grown, shared, communicated and governed. This special edition of Mizizi Magazine, developed with KHSA, YPARD, ICLEI Africa’s AfriFOODLinks programme and Green Action Week, brings together stories of youth leadership in agroecology, entrepreneurship, storytelling, local food systems and community action.

The examples are deliberately varied. In Malawi, youth are building entrepreneurship skills around food and farming. Across different countries, women- and youth-led agroecology networks are creating stronger spaces for participation. In South Africa, young storytellers are helping make organic farming and Participatory Guarantee Systems more visible, while YPARD experiments with cafés, podcasts and even board games as tools for learning and exchange. Other stories range from mushroom-based livelihoods for rural women in Benin to public art, photography and traditional food culture as ways of strengthening engagement with food systems.

What connects these initiatives is a broader view of youth participation. Young people are not treated only as future farmers or beneficiaries, but as entrepreneurs, communicators, knowledge holders, organizers and cultural actors. The edition shows how agroecological transitions can be strengthened when youth have spaces to experiment, tell their own stories, build networks and turn local knowledge into new economic and social opportunities.