1. The biggest challenges youth in Africa face after going through youth-specific capacity development initiatives in agriculture is the employability with a reasonable level of compensation and availability of humane work conditions. Youth trained in agriculture looks at other fields, such as businesses, IT, etc and does not find agriculture very "glamorous". Part of the reason is that most agricultural raw materials are not truly costed, and hence the small margins, specifically at production stage.
3. In terms of post-capacity development support, there is a big scope for youth e-networks, communities of practice, innovation platforms, etc that can keep them aware of emerging opportunities and sharing and co-learning about how to solve such challenges through experience sharing. I think placing youth representation in agricultural policy and implementation fora can also provide country specific solutions by identifying and addressing barriers.
4. In Africa, like many other developing countries, policies alone remain inadequate. Availability of policy is no guarantee that the policies will get implemented in letter and spirit. Probably once idea could be encouraging large businesses to experiment with youth led initiatives, such as agribusiness incubator programs. Governments could, for example, provide tax rebate for business engaging youth.
5. There is a large untapped potential for universities, governments, development organizations, and donors to work together to launch e-learning courses, Massive Open Online Courses, learning repositories, and providing space for virtual interactions. There is a large amount of knowledge on both successes and failures in empowering and engaging youth in agriculture, but this knowledge is scattered and could be shared through use of ICT. ICT could also facilitate match-making between capacitated youth and youth demand.
Dr. Muhammad Mehmood-Ul-Hassan