The 20th Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme Partnership Platform (CAADP-PP), coupled with the commemoration of the 15th Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security (ADFNS), took place in Harare, Zimbabwe, from the 29th of October to the 1st of November 2024. At this event, GanzAfrica Foundation and AGRA co-hosted a side event titled “Leveraging Youth to Accelerate CAADP Implementation Post Malabo: Lessons from GanzAfrica.” Policy experts and leaders from the African Union Council (AUC), the Royal Norwegian Embassy, and the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture were this event’s panelists. The side event explored the vision of empowering young Africans to lead in the transformation of agrifood systems in the coming post-Malabo era.
Boaz Keizire, Head of Policy and Advocacy at AGRA led the session and opened the discussion with an intriguing context showing that Africa is at a critical stage of its socio-economic transformation. The increasing population and rapid urbanization raise the challenge of producing enough food to feed the population and create gainful employment for the youth. In October this year, Africa’s population reached 1.525billion. The continent is the youngest, with approximately 60% of the population under 25. While this is a challenge, it is also an opportunity because the labor productivity for the youths is more significant than any other age group. Therefore, platforms, partnerships, mechanisms, and strategic policies are needed to harness this youthful population to accelerate the continental agenda on food systems transformation anchored on the CAADP strategy in the upcoming post-Malabo era while generating opportunities for the youths.
The opening remarks by Janet Edeme, Head of the Division for Rural Economy at the African Union Commission (AUC), provided a continental overview of efforts to engage youth in agribusiness. She underscored the significant challenges African nations are facing in advancing youth engagement, albeit ongoing efforts. A notable point was that only ten African Union member states are currently on track to meet commitment number 4, indicator 3.3 – focused on youth participation in agribusiness value chains. While a continental policy framework (African Agribusiness Youth Strategy) is in place, it has yet to be domesticated by many member states. This gap in adoption is compounded by challenges such as limited financing options and an environment that is often not conducive to fostering youth involvement in agribusiness and policy implementation. Addressing these barriers is crucial to empowering young people and enabling their active participation in transforming agrifood systems across the continent.
Thierry Hoza Ngoga, CEO and Founder of GanzAfrica shared lessons and experiences on leveraging youth as a workforce to support policy formulation and implementation. The collaboration between GanzAfrica, the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI), and the National Land Authority (NLA) in Rwanda has yielded significant outcomes, notably the development of the Rwanda Land Management Dashboard and providing support in the development of the Agriculture Management Information System (AMIS). These tools equip these institutions to leverage the digitization of processes and access to data and analytics to guide and enhance strategic decisions. In addition, critical highlights of other successful projects include seed system assessment and collaborative efforts to strengthen local climate change adaptation systems for Rwandan smallholder farmers. This holistic approach provides a platform and creates space for youths to contribute to policy formulation and implementation while building the institutional capacity of government institutions to deliver on their mandates. The youth delivery model is firmly rooted in data-supported solutions, reinforcing the value of evidence-informed policy development and implementation. Such a model can be leveraged to engage skilled youths to collect and synthesize data and build systems that ease the reporting processes on the Biennial Review equivalence of the post-Malabo agenda.
Dr. Octave Semwaga, advisor to the ministry and former Director General of Planning in the Ministry of Agriculture in Rwanda, shared insights from the ministry on the positive impact of having a team of young fellows integrated into government institutions. These fellows provide crucial policy support, develop systems and tools, and synthesize data and evidence, making it readily available for policymakers to guide their policy decisions.
By opening doors to roles such as analysts, researchers, and policymakers, this approach allows young Africans to contribute to policy-focused positions supporting Africa’s transformation. This was recognized by Odd Eirik Arnesen, Minister Counsellor and Regional Food Security Envoy at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Dar Es Salaam, who highlighted it as a blueprint for scaling youth engagement across Africa. He also emphasized broadening youth engagement and creating platforms and opportunities beyond agribusiness and entrepreneurship. He stressed that initiatives like GanzAfrica must be supported to support the broader CAADP agenda and enhance institutions’ capacity.
The key lessons from this side event emphasize the critical importance of domesticating and accelerating the African Agribusiness Youth Strategy (AAYS) implementation to accelerate youth engagement in agribusiness. African young people need to be empowered with support to build skills and shape their future roles in agrifood systems transformation. GanzAfrica’s transformative model shows the power of youth-focused training and mentorship, pairing capacity building with real-world policy impact. African countries must prioritize creating inclusive institutions and systems, cultivating platforms at all levels for youth involvement, and investing in long-term capacity building to develop a skilled workforce that drives sustainable development. Through partnerships and collaboration, we need to create more platforms to harness youth’s digital, data, and analytical skills to accelerate CAADP goals in the Post-Malabo era, ensuring Africa’s youth lead the continent’s food systems transformation at the policy level while creating opportunities for many other youths at different nodes of the agrifood system value chain. Such platforms are needed beyond the agrifood systems sector.
Stay tuned as we follow this journey of collaboration and transformation, spotlighting Africa, which is led by its youth and prepared for future generations.
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