Inequitable land tenure practices that favor elders, men, and elites systematically exclude the youth from engaging in sustainable agriculture.

This kind of scenario has been worsened by the absence of robust land rental and sales markets coupled with financial constraints with restricted access to credit and savings among others.

This was revealed by former Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, who is AGRA board chair while presenting a paper on Connection to Territories: Youth and Land Rights’ at COP28 Food Systems Pavilion Session, last week.

According to Dessalegn, the journey for African youth towards securing land rights and meaningful employment is filled with a complex array of obstacles; and called on African leaders to address the stated challenges as a pivotal step towards unlocking the potential that Africa’s youth hold for sustainable agricultural development.

He added that a total of 12 million youth enter the employment market each year across the African continent, but only 25% are absorbed into formal jobs, leaving large numbers either unemployed or underemployed.

Additional information from Dessalegn indicates that currently, 54% of Africa's workforce relies on the agricultural sector for their livelihoods, income, and employment, particularly in family farming.

And that the agricultural sector has a more substantial impact on youth employment compared to any other sector. Within agriculture, the food economy emerges as the largest employer, encompassing various activities from farming to processing, packaging, transportation, storage, distribution, and retailing.

He added that this value chain alone accounts for 66% of total employment, equivalent to 82 million jobs.

Through AGRA, he said that they have renewed efforts to explore sustainable solutions for the youth demographic in their 2023-2027 strategy, with a focus on Inclusivity as one of the cross-cutting themes across all their work.

This will be implemented through programmes such as the Generation Africa Programme, where they have partnered with Bayer which currently works with 10,000 agri-preneurs, a number that AGRA plans to increase to 10 million in the next five years.

Through the same programme, the plan is to enable viable small, medium, and micro enterprises to access capital, support job creation through the value chains, and increasing  adoption of innovations and breakthrough technology that support agriculture.

Apart from Bayer, AGRA has also partnered with the MasterCard Foundation under a programme that aims at creating up to 1.5million dignified and fulfilling work opportunities within the agricultural sector across seven African countries, including Uganda; this will reach out to 10 million unemployed youth, 50% of whom are expected to be young women.