YouthPower
On Tuesday, 3rd September 2019, I was one of the panelist discussing the topic Harnessing the Digital and Demographic Dividends in Agri-Food Systems for Rural Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship.
The session began with a short presentation from Francis Obirikorang, CEO of Agrocenta Ltd, a Ghanaian startup which is providing solutions to farmers through two services, Agrotrade and Agropay. Agrorade facilitates trade between smallholder farmers and consumers or buyers while Agropay is a financial inclusion platform targeted at smallholder farmers which enables digital payments, microloans and crop insurance for farmers.
Ms Reeta Roy, the president of the Mastercard Foundation took the stage afterwards and spoke passionately about how the youth were the future of agriculture. She started her presentation with a profound statement “Imagine the future of Ghana in 30 years. If you don't see the African farmer, think again” and went ahead to talk about how the youth should be part of the whole agricultural value chain.
She went on to highlight several success stories of young agripreneurs who had been supported by the Mastercard Foundation to start and scale several agribusiness ventures.
Then came the panel discussion moderated by Kofi Kissiedu Acquaye, the Africa Coordinator for Ypard.
Alongside me, the other members of the panel were Hon. Christophe Bazivamo the Deputy Secretary General of EAC, Mr. Ade Freeman, the Regional Program Leader at FAO, Dr. Mel Oluoch the Regional Director Africa of Sasakawa Africa Association and Mr. Abdulsalam Toheed the CEO Farmignite.
Essentially, we spoke about how the youth could take advantage of emerging digital technologies to make agriculture better and in the process, create opportunities for the youth in rural areas.
The panel was a good mix of both youth agripreneurs and more established professionals and policymakers all of who shared unique perspectives on how we could leverage.
The key takeaways from the panel discussion were as follows:
The youth are important to the future of Agriculture.
Any country which doesn’t take the role of technology serious in agriculture will be left behind.
Policy is important in creating an enabling environment for agriculture to thrive.\
Agriculture goes far beyond food production to other parts of the value chain like processing, storage, etc
