25 Feb 2020

 Young people are critical to the existence and sustainability of the agricultural sector. 

Minister of Agricultural Development and Food Security, Dr Edwin Dikoloti, said this during the official opening of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Programme (CAADP) national youth dialogue on agriculture and sustainable livelihoods. 

Dr Dikoloti said, in his response to the State of the Nation Address in 2019,  that it was imperative to actively engage and partner with the youth as the actors in structuring the country’s economy. 

“The future of this country solely depends on the youth and as an elected legislator, it is my responsibility to create a conducive environment for their ideas to thrive” additing ‘for our country to be globally competitive, we need the freshness, vigor and the spirit of our youth as enshrined in our vision 2036 which speaks to Achieving prosperity to all,’ he said. 

He added that government was currently reviewing the 1991 National Policy on Agriculture Development (NPAD) with a view to exploit the potential through its comprehensive stance and approach. 

“This policy sets out the agricultural transformation agenda by providing guidance through a process by which individual farm households could shift progressively from subsistence-oriented production towards more specialised and market-oriented production”, he said. 

The minister further told delegates that the national dialogue was an implementation of an initiative that was birthed at the CAADP Partnership Platform that was held in 2016 in Ghana with the aim to engage in youth dialogues across countries on their effective participation in agriculture and sustainable livelihoods. 

He added that the government had identified the agricultural sector as one of the priority sectors that had a high potential for job creation and improvement in livelihoods, and it was for that reason that the government continued to invest significantly in the sector. 

Executive Director for CAADP Youth Network ( CYN), Mr Ibrahim Cessay, said the youth dialogue which  was inspired by the Africa Agenda 2036 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals was formed at the Youth Side Event during the 12TH CAADP Partnership Platform Meeting organized by the African Union Commission and NEPAD in April 2016 in Accra, Ghana, principally as a Pan-African Consortium of youth organizations and initiatives working on agriculture and sustainable livelihoods across Africa. 

‘The Goal of CYN, is to create one million jobs for youth in the agriculture value chain by 2025; through access to land, markets, innovative financing, training and green technology for 1000 African Youth Agri-preneurs by 2022’, he said. 

The CYN CAADP National Youth Dialogues are piloted in Botswana, Namibia and Zambia, as part of CYN Strategic Plan 2020-2023: with funding from GIZ. Ends