OREANDA-NEWS. September 06, 2017. The African Development Bank (AfDB) has deepened agriculture with an initial investment of US $774 million in six countries in Africa to ignite economic growth and make agriculture an attractive investment.

Chiji Ojukwu, Director of Agriculture and Agro-Industry Department at the AfDB, said Monday that the Bank’s ENABLE Youth Programme, part of its Feed Africa initiative, is making steady progress in changing the way agriculture is perceived – from a traditional way of life, to a lucrative investment.

Through the ENABLE (Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment) Youth Programme, which aims to produce some 300,000 agribusinesses and create jobs for 1.5 million youth in just five years, the Bank set itself an ambitious target of nurturing a young pool of future agricultural millionaires in order to solve Africa’s population growth challenge.

The Bank estimates 100 million young Africans would be entering the job market within 10 years. Bank estimates show a substantial number of the youth currently live in rural areas, where demand for new labourers could continue to absorb the new job-market entrants.

To respond to the job-creation challenge, the Bank’s Jobs for Youth Strategy lays emphasis on a series of key agricultural sector reforms, aiming to make land more readily available. It also focuses its approach on improving the capacity of local farmers and producers and creating an enabling field for food processing.

AfDB’s Chief Financial Economist and the Coordinator of the ENABLE Youth Programme, Edson Mpyisi, said battling a mindset change and beginning to view agriculture as a serious field, much different from holding the hoe, but building an industrial chain, still remains a challenge to overcome.

According to Lilian Uwintwali, Chief Executive Officer at M-AHWI Tech Limited, a Rwandan youth in agricultural technology firm, the perception of the youth towards agriculture remains traditional and the private-sector players continue to perceive agriculture as less lucrative.

“For business to thrive, it has to be money-making, there is need for markets and stakeholder cooperation is important. I work with 10,000 farmers, but many still lack information on which banks they can lend from,” Uwintwali said during the 7th African Green Revolution Forum in Abidjan at a session on Youth Agripreneurs.