The two-day conference dubbed, “The Youth and Food Systems Transformation Policy Convening 2024”, was held in Accra as part of the World Youth Week Celebration.

It offered insight to young people in the agricultural sector about the opportunities and new development in the agricultural sector to promote agribusiness and foster economic vibrancy.

The conference, themed: “Empowering youth for decent jobs and climate-resilient food systems in Ghana,” focused on unveiling opportunities in agribusiness and providing technical expertise to accelerate innovative business models”. It hosted over 500 youths from across the country.

The AGRA and Mastercard Foundation in partnership for youth empowerment in the agricultural sector was part of a five-year programme, which was signed in December last year.

Participants in the conference

It is expected to create 92,000 decent jobs for young people in the agricultural sector by the end of the programme.

At the conference, the Country Director of AGRA, Dr Betty Annan, underscored the need for youth entrepreneurship for the future of food production and agriculture, stating that it has the capacity “to help give the youth a voice, to help us to create enabling environments, to catalyse the creation of employment, and meaningful jobs in the space of agribusiness”.

She said the programme would help young people in the agricultural sector to obtain the necessary skills and inputs, markets and understand the entire value chain to help the sector to thrive and maintain sustainability.

“We want to see the progress of our youth in the space of agriculture, and the whole value chain, not just an aspect of production or productivity, but looking at it from inputs, including seeds, all the way to the markets. We want to get the youth involved in all the various stages,” she said.

She added that the programme also would offer the necessary finance and other incentives that would encourage the youth in agriculture to continue in their farming, and also ensure that technology that had been proven delivered to the youth and to smallholder farmers to foster interest in the food production which prove critical for ensuring food-resilience. 

Commitment

Giving his remark, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Pius Enam Hadzide, affirmed the government’s commitment to youth enterprise development and empowering youth in agriculture.

He indicated that the government, over the last seven years, had laid solid foundations to address the many challenges confronting the youth; that although the issues had not been entirely addressed, the government had sustained efforts and investments in ensuring that those issues were addressed.

Mr Hadzide encouraged young people to keep the faith and to continue in the direction that “we are in at the moment. That is how to get out of the conundrum that we are faced with”.