The President of African Development Bank (AfDB), DrAkinwumi Adesina, said that Africa will be spending up to US$110 billion net by 2025 on food importation if agriculture is not modernised and industrialised as the bedrock of our economies.
He said this can come about if the youths are enabled to play a leading role. Speaking in Des Moines, Iowa, United states of America, at 2017 Borlaug dialogue symposium on making farming cool investing in future African farmers and Agripreneurs he said over the next 10 years, 120 million young Africans will be looking for work. “Each year, only three million out of the 12 million who enter the labor market actually find jobs. What are these unemployed youth supposed to do? Unless we create employment opportunities for them, or enable them to create employment for themselves and others, Africa’s burgeoning youth will give rise to serious political and socio-economic disruption.”
Adesina said this informed why the AfDB came up with the ENABLE Youth initiative.
“It has been developed partly in response to these projections. For the ENABLE Youth Initiative farming is neither drudgery, nor backbreaking intensive labour with no financial rewards. For ENABLE Youth, agriculture is hard work, but rewarding and profitable. Africa’s next billionaires are not going to come from oil, gas, or the extractives. ENABLE Youth is about investing in small agribusinesses today so that they can grow into large enterprises tomorrow.
He by empowering youth at each stage of the agribusiness value chain, ” we enable them to establish viable and profitable agribusinesses, jobs and better incomes for themselves and their communities.” Speaking on how this will be carried out, Adesina said over the next five years, that the bank plan to train 10,000 young agripreneurs per country across 30 countries in Africa.
“That is 300,000 young Agripreneurs. With the support of our regional member countries which have expressed great interest in ENABLE Youth, we have already approved projects in six countries for a total amount of US$774 million.”
