Work Session | Strengthening the Impact of Youth Agripreneurship Programming

Youth agripreneurship is increasingly put forward as a potential solution to foster decent employment for youth, boost agricultural production and tackle rising food insecurity. But despite the popularity of youth agripreneurship initiatives the evidence base on their effectiveness is still thin. As a result, a range of misconceptions and missed opportunities undermine the effectiveness of these programmes.

This learning session, building on the learnings from the previous session, will further engage a diverse learning group to bring youth agripreneurship programming to a new level of effectiveness.

In the previous session, insights from the research by The Broker were shared and we discussed how better targeting, combinations of supply and demand side interventions and meaningful youth engagement can play a role in improving the effectiveness of programming.

In this second session we will further dive into actionable insights and lessons learnt for overcoming these common challenges of youth agripreneurship initiatives. By facilitating exchange between youth entrepreneurs, policymakers and practitioners, we will identify concrete actions with three guest speakers on:

• Targeting the “right” youth (Tumwebaze Khamutima, Young Farmers Champions Network, Uganda)
• Meaningful youth engagement (Jean Muthamia-Mwenda, SNV, Netherlands)
• Bridging the gap between evidence-based recommendations and policy moments (Dr. Goudian Gwademba, Latia Agribusiness Solutions, Kenya)

Together we will formulate actionable opportunities on how knowledge platforms such as INCLUDE and the Netherlands Food Partnership can support the development sector in catalysing decent job creation for African youth in the agricultural sector.