Madame Barr Nkiruka Nnaemego, Chief Executive Officer and founder of the Fresh and Young Brains Development Initiative has been explaining to Rite news that there are huge opportunities in Agriculture for young people in Africa. She was however concerned that these young people do not know the essence of and are oblivious to these vast opportunities staring them in the face.
Madame Barr Nkiruka who also doubles as the Regional Coordinator of the AU Agric Forum in Ghana was speaking in an interview with Rite news on the sidelines of the CAADP Non-State Actors Engagement in Accra. She noted that many of these opportunities lie in the existence of vast lands in Africa which serve as a source of huge opportunities for the youth of the continent to fall on for the purposes of agricultural production.
She also mentioned that with the help of our climate changes, we can also make good use of our land as a natural resource.
The Nigerian however pointed out that within these opportunities that we have also lays several restrictions. “Young people do not have access to land because of cultural or religious reasons,” she observed. According to her, apart from land opportunities there are also grant benefits, organized conferences and other opportunities for the youth to get well trained and equipped to go into agriculture.
She was equally concerned that most of the young people, after the Regional programs that are held under the Africa Union Agric Forum, it is realized are not able to get the benefit or get any impact from the program simply because most of them are just ignorant about agriculture. She referred to documentations as well as developmental and technological programs organized for the youth which she said concluded that the impact of the Agric Forums on the youth is not attractive.
She was convinced that agriculture is not attractive to young people of the continent because there is still so much entity on matronage farming for it to be done.
Madam Nkiruka lamented that most of our youth these days sit in the comfort of their rooms and watch sports or entertainment programs but find it so difficult to watch agric programs. She was however hopeful that there are still other ways to engage the young people in agric because the African population is growing and the importance of our climate changes can be utilized. To her, lands and equipment should be given to African children as gifts as a means of attracting them into the fold of agriculture.
She encouraged the granting of micro credit facilities to young people in the rural areas who have access to community lands to help them in their production. She proposed the allocation of lands to the youth to address the problem of unemployment in the system while separating places of settlement from farming areas.
Madam Nkiruka called on the Central governments on the continent to encourage the youth into agric and also to make clear demarcations between farming areas and settlements. She was confident that with this, processing, branding and even exportation could be efficiently handled.
To her, Africans have a bright future if its young people work in a collaborative manner under the Agenda 2063. What would do the trick for her is for the continent to have focused youth who know the importance and benefits of agriculture if the government channels its efforts into them.
Touching on The AU Agriculture Forum, she explained that it is a program organized to invest into the youth of Africa to go into farming to help Africa to rise in production, packaging and even exportation. It is not only aimed to help in production but also to create jobs for the youth of Africa to minimize the rate of unemployment and put away the notion of graduating from tertiary institutions only to search for white collar jobs that are not in existence.
Source: ritefmonline.org
