The African Development Bank (AfDB) has commended African youths for playing a key role in scaling up the continent’s agricultural production to transform Africa’s food systems.
According to a statement from AfDB, Dr Beth Dunford, Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development, said the bank celebrated International Youth Day (IYD) with Africa’s next generation of ‘agripreneurs’.
Dunford noted those who were celebrated were those whose “innovations in agribusiness were helping to feed Africa”.
“As the world observes International Youth Day, Africa is producing a growing number of young entrepreneurs who are adopting new ideas to bring more affordable, quality food from farm to fork.”
Furthermore, the Enable Youth Coordinator, Edson Mpyisi, added that the youth were more willing to try out new technologies and innovations to lead the transformation of food systems towards higher production and productivity.
“The interest is there – as the prize money gets bigger.
“We need to think of food and agriculture as a system, not as disjointed issues of poverty or food insecurity.
“Nutrition, water, good health, the climate, environment, trade, food as a human right – all these are interconnected.”
Mpyisi added that the success of young agripreneurs in Africa could help address important social and economic issues.
The bank’s AgriPitch competition is part of the African Youth Agripreneurs Forum (AYAF), an annual event organised by its Enable Youth programme.
Enable Youth is designed to empower youth at each stage of the agribusiness value chain as agripreneurs.
The target for the programme is to contribute to the establishment of 300,000 youth-led enterprises by 2025.
Also, the forum instils a culture of innovation and nurturing for technology-led agribusiness innovations to create jobs and improve youth livelihoods.
It is open to youth, aged 18 to 35 years, who hold African nationality or citizenship, since its launch in 2017.
The 2020 virtual competition drew more than 2,500 applications, compared to approximately 600 applications in the 2019 event, which awarded US$ 74,000 in prizes.
Ikenna Nzewi is one of the agripreneurs and Chief Executive Officer of Releaf, a smallholder farmer food procurement company focusing on industrialising food processing in Africa.
Releaf’s agribusiness plan won over a panel of judges and investors during the 2020 AgriPitch competition, where the continent’s top agripreneurs vied for a share of the US$120,000 in seed funding prizes and a slot in the competition’s business development boot camp.
Releaf’s innovative approach to improving food systems is to help industrialise Africa by setting up smaller factories that are closer to farmers.
It is also aimed to finance and teach farmers agricultural practices that make their businesses more productive.
Nzewi said being closer to the farmers afforded the opportunity for them to be paid more.
“When the logistics costs are really high, you have to pay farmers low prices for their commodities.”
Placing first in the “early-start up” category, Releaf took home a US$ 20,000-prize cheque.
“The grant was very helpful to operationalise our work. We started operations in January. The publicity was helpful for our company.
“Being able to have more people hear about how we are tech-enabled industrialists has been really exciting,” Nzewi said.
The theme for the 2021 International Youth Day is “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health”.
