Young people, agriculture, and employment in rural Africa
This paper (PDF) by UNU-WIDER examines the current interest in addressing the problem of young people’s unemployment in Africa through agriculture. It aims to address what role policy and associated programmes and projects can play in re-aligning rural young people’s engagement with agriculture. By use of two overarching concepts, transition and mobility, a conceptual framework is introduced that could be used as a lens for the analysis of policies, programmes and projects involving young people and agriculture in Africa. The framework is used in a preliminary exploration in four examples of government initiatives (in Ghana, Malawi and Ethiopia). It is argued that policy and programmes that seek to engage young people with agriculture must be more realistic, rooted in more context-specific economic and social analysis, and appreciative of the variety of ways that rural men and women use agriculture to serve their needs and interests.