Member profile
Mr. Julian Akinremi
Organization:
Fourteen farms
Country:
Nigeria
Field(s) of expertise:
- Food security
- Governance and institutional development
- Plant production
- Livestock
- Water resources and infrastructure
- Food systems
- Climate change
- Agricultural development
- Rural development
- Economic development
- Learning and knowledge management
- Policies, strategies and guidelines
- Programme and project implementation
I am working on:
Food Security Advocacy with focus on rural farmers and teenagers. with the view to teach and train on smart agric practices, climate smart agriculture, post havest loss reduction and mechanized large scale farming.
Mr. Julian Akinremi
Hello this is a wonderful topic and am sure every active advocate for youth participation in agriculture would want to drop a few words. I would start my little contribution by giving my view on this question.
What should be the nature of post-capacity development support to these youth in order to retain them in agriculture, and to ensure the sustainability and long-term impact of youth-specific CD initiatives?
After every CD initiative, the expected outcomes should be managed considering the following factors: Long term ability of the agribusiness to thrive, start-up challenges prevailing in the locality where the business is setup, marketability of the intended business with regards to import substitution and quality of harvested or processed material.
I want to assume two factors can help keep youths in agribusiness after capacity building or development training and they are:
1. Follow-ups: If these youths have been encouraged to take-up careers in the agricultural sector, and their capacities to make impact in the sector has been developed then, the organizers of the CD training must create avenues to follow–up these new startups.
2. Empowerment: If a person is trained on how to cultivate cassava for 3months then he is left alone to startup with little or no funding, am certain he would lose interest after the first 2 weeks if funds to implement the knowledge gained and the ideas that sprouted during or after the training. Provision for empowerment must be made alongside CD training plans.
In other words the post CD activities would determine how well the CD would be used to impact on agriculture.
1. What are the biggest challenges youth in Africa face after going through youth-specific capacity development initiatives in agriculture?
i. Finance: knowledge is power but how many people have been able to use their knowledge to generate wealth. A job seeking youth who is not an agricultural graduate is trained to practice agriculture and not empowered to get land, seeds, fertilizer and tools. No matter how impactful the CD sessions were the zeal to implement the ideas and knowledge would die off faster than it came.
ii. Infrastructure: We have lots of challenges with post-harvest handling of agricultural materials. Good road networks, standard farm structures in rural areas, farm tools and other basic need to enable youths make honest gains from carrying out farm work must be made available.
iii. Markets: Local farmers have issues with imported goods, local prices are higher, processing skills are poor or non-existing hence a sizable amount of the farm products go to waste.
iv. Rural Development: Asking a graduate to relocate to a farming community which is miles away from the rural area that is just bearable for the youth is a difficult thing to ask in this age of cinemas, internet, etc.
2. What are the examples of existing post-capacity development sustainability initiatives for youth in agriculture in Africa?
i. Grants and Loans: Bank of Industry (for processors) loans, Bank of Agriculture loans, USAID grants, Tony Elumelu Foundation grants etc. are available for young entrepreneurs in Nigeria and Africa.
What works and what does not?
i. Selection system: we have some organization using high tech selection systems that have breed seasoned agripreneurs while others have selected job seeking graduates who have little or no flair for agriculture.
ii. Focus should be on Agriculture students’ right from campus. They should be nurtured systematically to love what they do over time till they graduate. Most would create jobs in the agricultural sector before becoming graduates.
3. What post-capacity development support do the youth need?
What can the youth do to support each other in developing their skills and capacities?
i. Interstate/ Region/ Country Collaboration
ii. Create Networks
iii. Meet often offline and on line to share ideas, challenges and proffer solutions.
4. What enabling environment is needed to ensure sustainability of youth in agriculture capacity development initiatives?
i. Access to startup finance
ii. Mentoring
iii. Entrepreneurship support follow-up
iv. Business friendly government policies aimed at enabling SMEs grow
v. Rural Development.
5. Is there a role for modern technologies, including Information and Communication Technologies, in sustaining capacity development initiatives?
Yes there is a major role for ICT and modern technologies. Educated farmers want online store for agricultural products, online markets that are secure, apps for measuring starch content, moisture content, desirable properties, apps for networking youths all over the world in same line on the agriculture food chain, apps that enable them have access to info on outbreak of pest and disease, new varieties of seeds, new processing methods, user friendly data collection apps, easy to use monitoring and evaluation apps, daily water requirement apps.
Lots of work has been done to ensure that youths build careers that thrive in the agricultural sector but more can still be done.
Akinremi Julian
Food, Agricultural and Environmental Engineer, Agripreneur and Agribusiness Consultant.
CEO Fourteen Farms/ YPard Local Rep (Osun State)
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