Development for youths in agribusiness in Uganda
These two working papers from IITA focus on youth in agribusiness in Uganda. The first paper (PDF) by Turolla, M. et al., studies the most efficient strategy to tackle constraints and provide opportunities for Ugandan youth in agribusiness. Results revealed that the main concepts of youth, agribusiness and agripreneurship are defined in very different ways by development organisations and youths. Development organisations adopt either a public- or private- drive approach, which have very different social impacts on beneficiaries. Furthermore, youth is not a homogenous group and there are numerous barriers for youth to access productive resources. The development programmes revealed limited efficiency. Therefore, programmes should account for variability and understanding is needed on youth’s needs, capacities and constraints. The second paper (PDF) by Turolla, M. et al. aims to explore the different ways in which development agencies design and implement their programmes, and how these are perceived by the youth. Main lessons learned are that youth is a heterogeneous group with different potential for agribusiness. Furthermore, Uganda is a diverse country which influences the agribusiness traditions and women are discriminated on accessibility to assets and household relations that do not allow them to earn and retain an income. Advise for development organisations is to set feasible and consequent objectives, place youth in context by designing a tailor-made programme, scaling results, create and enabling environment and have a household approach whereby the whole household in engaged.