For this week's episode, we asked FAO expert Christiane Monsieur to document her trip to a handful of villages in Niger. These villages organize Dimitra Clubs. In communities all throughout Niger, there’s been a quiet revolution going on through these clubs. Its protagonists are tens of thousands-strong. They organize in local groups of women, men and young people. Their goal? Mobilizing communities to find local solutions to local problems – from stray trash to malnutrition. Their method sounds simple – but has proven to be transformational in hundreds of villages across the country: listening to each other.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is rolling out digital innovation technologies in the form of SMS text messages and smart phone applications across the African continent, starting in Senegal and Rwanda. In this pilot episode of FAO's new podcast Stories From The Field, we head to Tambacounda, 450 kilometers south-east of Dakar, Senegal, to find out how digital tools are helping to transform the country’s agriculture sector and boost farmers' livelihoods.

Africa has the youngest population in the world, with 60 percent of the population under the age of 25. Many young Africans are unemployed and are increasingly migrating away from rural areas in search of employment. Tens of millions of new jobs each year will have to be created in rural Africa just to include the new entrants into the labor market. Meanwhile, population trends suggest the demand for food across the continent will grow by 50 percent in the coming years. Josef Kienzle, an agriculture engineer at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), says the agricultural sector must digitalize and mechanize if it's to attract young people and ensure food security for a growing population.