Inevitably the Youth are the future of every nation and the bright future of every nation is born in today's Youth hence the urgent critical need to address Youth issues. Youth in Africa face challenges even after going through youth specific capacity development initiatives in agriculture, paramount to these challenges is sustainability. Initiatives or interventions are supposed to be time bound or be for a specific period with the believe and hope that after the intervention the intended will hold on sustainably. Most of the time it is not the case as the intended objective is often short lived because of various reasons. Success stories do exist or have happened but some have dimmed out usurping the blazing hope of success and sustainability that was the initial objective of specific interventions. Depending on the time it took to observe the good practices that added life to the interventions for the period of their existence, yes good practices have been learnt and successes have been experienced and hence can be shared even though they have their expiry dates dictated by new challenges that wared and defeated against them. This says to us interventions, specific and targeted as they may be are necessary but are not in any way adequate, therefore to stop at intervention and expect sustainability is not astute policy decision as it has proven to be inadequate by the many interventions that failed especially those that had only intervention (a short term take on) as an objective with no subsequent processes to ensure the desired sustainability (a long haul phenomenon).
The Youth need to collaborate, engage, link up, commit to growth/sustainability, and passionately believe that whatever they lay their hands to and work out will work out. There is huge potential for modern technologies in sustaining capacity development initiatives in agriculture, if they will be planned well, scoped well, resourced well, targeted well, implemented well, monitored and evaluated well. Surely it can be achieved.
Mme Milly Monkhei