AYA turned 1! Celebrating one year of digital engagements with African youth agripreneurs
August 31, 2022, marked the first anniversary of the African Youth Agripreneurs (AYA) platform, an online community designed for rural youth and entrepreneurs to connect, share and learn from each other in their journey to embrace agriculture as a decent work and profitable business.
The platform, launched and supported by FAO’s Integrated Country Approach (ICA) for boosting decent jobs for youth in the agri-food system, celebrated its one-year anniversary with a growing membership of 2,885 youth from all African countries and an impressive monthly growth rate of 28.6% since July 2022. The number of female members on the platform is close to 30% of the overall community, but it is worth noting that the gender engagement rate is almost balanced (47% for women vs. 53% of men).
AYA's offer of agribusiness-related content, learning resources, thematic discussions and do-it-yourself innovation toolkits has proven to be engaging over time: one every 3 members return to the platform at least once a month, and spends at least 3 minutes 14 seconds on it. These figures demonstrate the stickiness of the AYA platform, indicating that young people value it enough to spend more time on it, just as they do on other social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp.
Between July and September 2022, the AYA platform successfully hosted a number of programs targeting young women and men in agribusiness:
- On July 25th, the second cohort of the Virtual Agripreneurship training for all African youth was launched. FAO conducted the virtual and self-paced training in collaboration with RUFORUM. The training emphasizes the use of personal initiative principles (self-starting, future thinking, and perseverance) to help the youth in identifying opportunities in the value chain, conducting market research, developing a prototype, and conducting financial calculations.
- The Uganda Diaspora in Agribusiness Network (UDAN) launched a matchmaking program with FAO support through the project "Strengthening Capacity to Harness Positive Effects of Migration" to promote and facilitate diaspora investments, knowledge, and skills transfer in the Ugandan agri-food sector. The AYA platform facilitated the entire matchmaking process via a private group in which the 60 Ugandan diaspora had access to the agripreneurs' pitches and could contact them if they were interested. Within a few weeks of the official launch, three successful matches were made between youth agribusinesses and the Ugandan diaspora.
- Throughout September, the AYA platform hosted its first online mentorship and coaching sessions for young women agripreneurs in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, which was facilitated by the African Women Agribusiness Network (AWAN Afrika). The virtual sessions were a continuation of physical training delivered in May and June and were live streamed on the AYA platform. A chat feature enabled youth interaction with the trainers despite having limited internet bundles. The young women can also access training materials and live session recordings that have been posted on the platform as an online course. These serve as post-program support and ensure that participants remain engaged after the program ends.
- The Introductory course on Decent Work for Youth in Agribusiness was launched on 21st July and already counts more than 170 youth registered. The course was developed by the FAO Integrated Country Approach (ICA) programme for boosting decent jobs for youth in agribusiness. It aims to empower young agripreneurs to be responsible business leaders that drive more sustainable and inclusive agrifood systems for the future with decent work for all.
Moreover, on the occasion of the one-year anniversary, the platform members took part in the AYA Ambassador contest by referring to other young people and received medals based on the number of successful registrations. The medals they earn qualify them to be trained and mentored on how to use digital storytelling and social media to grow their personal businesses, manage online groups and promote agriculture among African youth.
Based on the activities offered on the platform, it is evident that AYA is a one-of-a-kind platform that benefits not only African youth agripreneurs, but also organizations that help them. The AYA platform can be used as a tool to provide any type of support to African youth agripreneurs by FAO and partner youth groups, NGOs, associations, governments, UN (United Nations) agencies, foundations, and others.
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