By T.S. Jayne, University Foundation Professor, and Felix Kwame Yeboah, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University

By 2050, sub-Saharan Africa will have 2.1 billion people – 22% of the world’s population compared to 12% today.  The size of Africa’s food and agribusiness is estimated to be one trillion US dollars by 2030.  Africa will exert growing impact on the world economy, including the global food system, and this impact will be determined over the next several decades by the training, values and competencies of young Africans between 15 and 35 years of age who account for 55% of the region’s labor force. Every year, roughly 11 million young Africans are entering the labor force. Under the most favorable projections, only a quarter of these young workers will find wage jobs. Agriculture and the informal sector will need to absorb most young Africans into gainful employment or the region will face escalating challenges associated with youth under-employment.

Over the past 15 years, African governments that have effectively promoted farm productivity growth have enjoyed faster rates of poverty reduction, higher rates of labor productivity in the non-farm segments of the economy, and a more rapid exit of the labor force out of farming. Because most African countries still depend largely on the performance of agriculture, promoting agricultural productivity growth will remain a crucial component of an effective youth employment strategy. 

Virtually no country in the world has transformed its economy from an agrarian economy to a modern one without sustained agricultural productivity growth. Putting more money in the hands of 500 million Africans who rely on farming for their livelihoods will have a decisive influence on the pace of growth in youth employment opportunities in the broader economy. 

Often considered more of a burden than a benefit, Africa´s youthful workforce could open up a wide range of economic opportunities in farming, in the downstream stages of agri-food systems and in the broader non-farm economy with the right mix of policies and public investments toward education and agriculture.

In a policy brief for the Farm Journal Foundation, my colleagues Chance Kabaghe and Isaac Minde, propose that the main thrust of a new approach to development assistance in Africa should be to shift the role of international partner organizations. Instead of providing the technologies, services and answers themselves they should help African organizations to do so. Just as the rise of US agriculture is greatly indebted to the US land-grant university system, the US Cooperative Extension Service, and a host of other public institutions, so are African farmers in need of effective local R&D and extension services and policy analysis units.  Filling these organizations with highly effective staff focuses our attention on countries’ educational systems.  

Private investment is of course crucial, but the scope for private investment will be determined by the enabling environment set by governments -- consider the difference between North and South Korea, for example.  For these reasons, well-functioning public institutions are crucial to opening the floodgates for private investment that will contribute to broad-based growth.  And well-functioning institutions require skilled and well-resourced staff.

Government policies and public investment can make agriculture much more attractive to young people – by making it profitable! The time has arrived for the US to find ways to effectively build African universities, agricultural training colleges, vocational schools, crop research organizations, extension systems and policy analysis institutes, realizing that competent organizations cannot be achieved without highly effective, skilled, and well-resourced staff. International private companies, universities and NGOs have important but increasingly redefined roles that support the development of competent African institutions.

African governments would be well served to adopt a multi-pronged youth livelihoods strategy:  First, focus on investing in agricultural productivity growth to create new opportunities for youth in farming and generate the multiplier effects that expand the number of job opportunities for youth in the broader off-farm economic system. Second, invest in education and skill development to enable young people to identify and exploit new opportunities. In these ways, governments hold the key to determining whether the region’s economic transformation will be a relatively smooth, robust and peaceful process or a painful and protracted one.