Getting the young into farming

AS communities in Africa start to rebound from the initial impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and look ahead, the importance of creating millions of jobs for the continent’s booming youth population cannot be overstated.

This will require concerted efforts across myriad sectors, but one that is brimming with vast and untapped resources is agriculture.

I hear a lot of dire warnings about the food situation in Africa, and there are indeed many reasons to be concerned. The pandemic disrupted supply chains, upending many farmers’ precarious livelihoods that are already being hit hard by the climate crisis in new and unsettling ways.

It’s easy to think that we are on an unalterable path toward a crisis of food security in Africa, but I know that doesn’t have to be the case.

The future of food on the continent is in the hands of African farmers, particularly our young farmers of whom we are in desperately short supply.

About 60 percent of Africans are under 25-yearsold, but the average age of Africa’s smallholder farmers is over 60.

Too many young people view farming as exhausting work with antiquated tools for very low pay. You rarely hear under 30s say “I want to be a farmer” and many parents shudder at the thought of their children going into agriculture.

Yet if we are going to secure a sustainable future of food in Africa, these things need to change. We need to show agriculture can be a major source of jobs for the future.

A report last month released by Heifer International reveals why youth are turning away from agriculture and highlights a major opportunity to evolve the sector and bring them back.

The survey, which drew responses from some 30,000 young people across 11 African countries, found that only about one in four young farmers has access to the kinds of agricultural technologies that are transforming food production around the world.

SOUTHERNTIMESAFRICA