from the livestock as manure for my garden while the ducks supply my pond with nutrients [from the droppings] but also help to clean the surroundings of my pond as they feed on grass and snails” (Mkomwa and Phalira 2018).


3.5 Nurturing the next crop of Africa’s farmers


Scores of young people are curating innovative, profitable and sustainable agricultural enterprises that are aiding them to shed the shackles of unemployment that previously dogged their lives. With their ingenuity, innovation and energy, youths are becoming the driving force – a catalyst towards agricultural transformation. The global food value chain already employs almost one billion people and generates up to US$2,400 billion to the global economy and it is estimated that the world will need to increase food production by at least 50 per cent by 2050 to adequately feed the population (FAO 2015). It would be ludicrous to ignore the lucrative opportunity that this presents.


Youth Action 18: Coffee passion, Uganda


Take James Kyewalabye, Uganda, for instance. After completing his undergraduate degree in commerce from Makerere University, the lure of a career in the banking industry was quite eminent. Yet, he chose an uncommon path: he ignored the desk job and fed his passion for coffee. Fast forward six years later, James is the executive director of Real Agricultural Solutions for Africa (RASA), an agribusiness start-up that produces high- quality coffee liqueur. And while the business faces the normal teething problems experienced by all start-ups, he makes a decent living for himself and has gone on to employ six young people. “Economic opportunities in agriculture are much bigger than you may realise.” he said. And this begs the question, what does he see that other young people might not?


Youth Action 19: Digital farming platform in Kenya


When Peris Bosire and Rita Kimani met at a computer science class at the University of Nairobi, they combined their knowledge in agriculture from growing up in small farming communities in rural Kenya with technology to provide a solution for the lack of access to finance faced by a majority of smallholder farmers. They figured that with little aggregated data about smallholder farmers’ financial history and performance, financial institutions would continue to view farmers as high risk and therefore lock them out of the formal financial system.


Through their enterprise, Farm Drive, they have provided a digital record platform that helps farmers to follow up on their farming activities through their mobile phones. Further to this, this digital platform fuses farmers’ data with relevant agricultural data to develop wide-ranging credit profiles that financial institutions can use when farmers apply for funding. Farm Drive hopes to help 500,000 farmers access mainstream financing.


3.6 The potential synergies between climate change mitigation, youth employment, and food security goals


Climate change, youth unemployment, and food insecurity are all issues at the heart of the SDGs. By 2030, the international development community aims to eradicate poverty (SDG1), end hunger (SDG2), promote productive employment for all (SDG8), and combat climate


change and its impacts (SDG13), amongst other goals (World Development Indicators 2016). With the deadline fast approaching, policymakers need, more than ever, to create synergies between sectors of development, in order to create employment opportunities for young people. Due to the adverse impacts of climate change, African countries are already experiencing loss of agricultural land, employment opportunities, and smallholder food production (FAO 2008). This can be reversed through CSA that reinforces the livelihoods of smallholders by equipping them with more effective ways of managing natural resources and deploying technologies that will help them produce and sell more (Williams, Mul, Cofie, Kinyangi, Zougmore, Wamukoya, Nyasimi, Mapfumo, Speranza, Amwata, Frid-Nielsen, Partey, Girvetz, Rosenstock, and Campbell 2015).


Further to this, more jobs can be created through strategic implementation of global agreements like the 2015 Paris Agreement which seeks to keep global temperature rise this century to substantially below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. For this to happen, countries must change the way they produce and consume energy. Such a transition will create new job opportunities (ILO 2018). In the same vein, global and country-led initiatives such as the REDD+, the Bonn Challenge and the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) also contain multiple employment opportunities that greatly benefit African youth. For AFR100 to succeed in its quest to restore degraded landscapes, it must enlist the participation of youth. In the same vein, employment can be found through initiatives like AFR100 which seek to restore degraded African landscapes while enhancing food security and fighting poverty. In pursuance of this mission, AFR100 can spur economic growth and create jobs for youth (World Resources Institute 2018).


However, economic opportunities for young people don’t just lie in restoration but also in the already existing ecosystems across Africa. Some of these opportunities can be found in the so-called Payments for Environmental – or Ecosystem – Services (PES). PES are formally defined as "…voluntary transactions between services users and service providers that are conditional on agreed rules of natural resource management for generating environmental services" (Wunder 2015). African countries can enact policies that secure central involvement of youth in natural resource management that benefits from payments of ecosystem services.


While they vary substantially in their implementation, PES often entail offering monetary incentives to individuals or communities conditional on the provision of a well-defined environmental service. Proponents of the tool argue that, in addition to offering strong incentives for environmental conservation, PES have the potential to also deliver socio-economic and welfare outcomes, making it an ideal tool for tackling both climate change and job creation.


35


Restoring our Land


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100