Youth

When young Africans hack the farming sector

The AgriHack Talent initiative is one of the CTA’s best-known projects, particularly through its AgriHack Pitch start-up support programme. We take a look back on this initiative, which, over the course of just a few years, has succeeded in bringing together agriculture, entrepreneurship and new technologies.

For farming fortune, dial mAgri

A Botswanan start-up is breaking the barriers to digital technologies for rural smallholder farmers. Brastorne Enterprises, a winner of CTA’s 2016 Pitch AgriHack competition, operates a mobile platform called mAgri to improve farmers’ access to information, markets and finance.

Lovin Kobusingye, the accidental entrepreneur

Sharing actionable knowledge helps to turn ideas into reality. The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has seen powerful returns from bringing together young entrepreneurial thinkers and doers from all over Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Developing a winning strategy

The rapid evolution of ICTs is providing new opportunities for young entrepreneurs in agriculture. However, there are many hurdles to be overcome before these fledgling agribusinesses become profitable.

Promoting Youth Employment in the Rice Value Chain

In many West African countries, the lack of employment opportunities in rural areas has led to an exodus of young people, both to major cities in the region and to Europe. This is a serious loss, as the young offer a potentially dynamic labour force at a time when the agricultural sector is desperately short of workers.

Empowering the Young through Agribusiness

Agriculture is the mainstay of Kenya’s economy, employing more than 70% of people in rural areas and contributing 26% of the GDP. However, youth unemployment in the countryside, as well as in the cities, is growing. Some 30% of Kenyans between the age of 20 and 24 are currently out of work. Increasing youth employment in agriculture could do much to address this problem, and it is one of the main aims of CTA’s ‘Youth Economic Empowerment through Agribusiness in Kenya’ (VijaBiz) project.

Bottling Mali’s wild plants for nutritious drinks

In 2016, Aïssata Diakité launched Zabbaan Holding – a company that makes juices from plants grown locally in central Mali by over 5,000 farmers.

An entrepreneur must be competitive and creative, but above all, open-minded

At the age of just 24, Madagascan Heritiaina Randriamananatahina heads up a cheese and syrup processing business that is growing fast. Lacking any formal qualifications, he discusses the barriers facing any aspiring young business man or woman in the agri-food industry.

A business has to be social

Martin Stimela, co-founder of Brastorne Enterprises, which provides ICT solutions for African agriculture, shares his insights on some of the core components that make up a successful business model.

Karim Sy: ‘We cannot think Africa without agriculture’

Forty-six-year-old Karim Sy rejects the label of ‘incubator’, preferring to describe himself as a ‘serial entrepreneur’. Nevertheless, Jokkolabs, his non-profit organisation set up in Senegal in 2010, now has 12 hubs spread in Africa and Europe, and is trying to uncover the African entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Recently appointed to the Presidential Council for Africa by French President Emmanuel Macron, Sy has also been working for several years with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) through the AgriHack programme.

e-Agribusiness: A vital resource for Togo’s agriculture sector

Back in March 2015, Togolese entrepreneur Edeh Dona Etchri launched the e-Agribusiness platform to connect people and organisations across the country’s agriculture sector. It has proved a vital source of information for otherwise isolated farmers and is helping to grow the sector nationwide. The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) worked with the founder to help him expand and market his business. Today, there are around 6,000 farmers across Togo using the platform.

A passion for porcine production

Accounting for 38% of worldwide meat production, pork is attracting a new generation of African entrepreneurs – bucking the continent’s traditional aversion to the meat.

Ismaël Tanko turning tomato into red gold

Ismaël Tanko, a 33-year-old entrepreneur, has created a fast-growing company whose tomato purees are already on sale in several West African countries. The next step is a more industrialised production line and an increased number of sales channels.

Don’t leave technology to the men

Dr Eleni Gabre-Madhin, CEO and Founder of blueMoon – Ethiopia’s first youth agribusiness incubator – shares her experience as a woman entrepreneur in Africa’s agricultural sector and stresses the importance that agribusinesses ‘think digital’.

Home-grown ICT solutions in agriculture come from young entrepreneurs

by Ken Lohento and Heike Baumüller

Young innovators in Africa, the Caribbean, and Pacific region, have recognised the need for creative solutions to raise agricultural productivity and the huge prospective market for their ICT-enabled services in agriculture. Although they still face many challenges, their products have the potential to transform agricultural value chains in developing countries.