Students and investors discussing business plans in the financial fair.

Fayoum, Egypt, 21 November 2017 – Agriculture is currently facing manychallenges such as decreased productivity and limited market access to sell produce. This is making it difficult for the sector to serve as a primary source of income for Egypt’s increasingly unemployed population. At the same time, insufficient access to information is among the factors most negatively affecting youth looking for jobs and seeking to launch entrepreneurial ventures.

In light of this, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has launched the “Agribusiness Development through Entrepreneurship for Youth Employment” project in cooperation with several agricultural technical schools in Fayoum, Egypt. The project is educating, developing, and assisting young agriculture students or graduates that have demonstrated entrepreneurial promise.

The project aims at building the capacity and social capital of educated youth to create new micro and small enterprises along the value chain. Given that the project focuses on providing women an equal opportunity in agribusiness entrepreneurship, 60 percent of its participants are female.

“With this project, we are working to create job opportunities and entrepreneurial prospects while also supporting young people to develop the agriculture sector with an influx of fresh and innovative perspectives,” said Alfredo Impiglia, Delivery Manager for the FAO Regional Initiative on Small-scale Family Farming.

“The project helped us broaden our technical skills while also developing our business communication, planning, and marketing skills. We also learned how to study and analyze strengths and weaknesses in order to turn them into opportunities,” said Nihal Abdalla Masoud, a student developing a poultry project.

To connect the students with potential investors, a financial fair was held today where the students were able to present their business plans to stakeholders from the agriculture and banking sector in order to widen their network and receive constructive feedback.

The financial fair was received positively by both the students and the investors. “The students impressed me with the level of professionalism in developing their business plans and in being so meticulous with the tiniest financial details which only finance experts would notice,” mentioned Ahmed Ramadan, Manager at the National Bank of Egypt.