Young People’s Involvement in Agricultural Value Chain

The Young Africa Works Summit aims to bring together a community dedicated to finding solutions to youth unemployment in Africa. One of our primary goals for the Summit is to engage young people, ensuring their voices, perspectives and ideas are heard. As part of this, we will be sharing a series of blogs written by young leaders working in the agricultural sector in Africa.

I was raised in the family with a farming background. When I was very young, I noted that many smallholder farmers were poor. I always had questions. I remember I used to ask my parents, “Why is it that many farmers are poor?”

Since then, I have cultivated my interest in agriculture and made up my mind that when I grow up I want to help farmers. Of course, in those days I was still young and I didn’t have a clue about how I could help. I realized that I could study agriculture at university, and once I graduated I could offer advice to farmers on better farming methods. My aim was to help farmers increase their yields, sell some of their produce and have the ability to support their livelihoods and improve their quality of life. That’s why, during my master’s research, I am focusing on the challenges faced by smallholder farmers and how they can be helped through testing various practices that improve crop yields.

I am also a volunteer coordinator for a project called the Graduate Farmer Incubation Programme. My role is to find funding sources and facilitate the development of partnerships with relevant stakeholders. This project is managed by a youth-led initiative called Associated Centre for Agro-based Development and Entrepreneurship Support (ACADES) in Lilongwe, Malawi.

The program acts as an agribusiness incubator, providing land (one hectare each), loans for irrigation equipment and startup capital and on-going advisory support to up to 45 young agricultural professionals over two years. After two years they are expected to repay their loans. The program aims to facilitate the development of young professionals as they transition to productive and financially independent citizens and drive the economic growth of Malawi through agribusiness. This program was developed because, despite the abundance of highly trained graduates in various aspects of agriculture production, Malawi continues to face high poverty levels, high unemployment rates, low agricultural productivity, poor industrial development, low economic growth rates and intermittent food and nutrition insecurity.

We are living in the days where finding a job is not easy due to high population growth. However, the agricultural value chain involves a lot of processes from the planting and harvesting to processing and transporting. In future, I would like to have my own farm whereby I will be involved in seed processing. Through my seed processing initiative, jobs will be created with people working at different levels of the seed processing value chain, from planting to harvesting. My initiative will train young people and smallholder farmers to grow a variety of crops. The aim will be to improve crop productivity by using modern technologies, and ensure food security. Studying agriculture is a great platform for me because I will utilize the knowledge gained and apply it in the seed processing industry.

Read more from Mphangera and her work in agriculture here.