About us
Africa is the world’s youngest continent: by 2050, 800 million Africans will be between 18 and 35 years old. Most of the youth and women in Africa have limited access to decent employment and economic opportunities (90% of the jobs are insecure) and this is especially true in rural areas, where there is a clear need for attention towards vulnerable communities. Women are particularly affected, as they are 17,3 % less likely to be employed.
The agriculture sector employs about 60% of the population between 15-35 years old. As such, it can play a key role to overcome the youth employment challenge that keeps on threatening stability and growth in many countries.
The OYA Programme supports the development of employment and entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector through agribusiness promotion. Indeed, agribusiness deals with different aspects of enhancing agricultural products by the means of value creation (production, processing, distribution, marketing, market access).
Bringing capacity at all levels of the value chains will support the agricultural sector (and agribusiness in particular) to unleash its full potential in terms of contribution to the economic growth of the African countries and the creation of (self-) employment opportunities for millions of youth across the continent.
Developed jointly by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Opportunities for Youth in Africa (OYA) programme answers to the dedicated call for accelerating efforts in the area of job creation for African youth, especially through agribusiness and entrepreneurship development.
By joining forces, FAO and UNIDO leveraged their respective comparative advantages, technical cooperation and expertise with a view to instill best practices in the areas of decent employment creation and entrepreneurship development, to build back better in the agriculture sector and more specifically in the agribusiness value chains development.
OYA integrated approach
The OYA integrated approach reflects the need to enhance the private-public partnership nexus that finds its relevance in a concerted effort between the public institutions and the private sector to build capacities while ensuring access to resources and improved coordination, including linkages between knowledge generation and adequate dissemination:
Women empowerment
Gender equality and the empowerment of women have significant positive impacts on sustained economic growth and sustainable industrial development, which are the drivers of poverty reduction and social integration. As such, the OYA programme mainstreams gender throughout all its activities: both men and women are systematically represented among all stakeholders and beneficiaries, with the objective of supporting women’s equal participation with men as decision-makers.
Environmental sustainability
OYA promotes climate-smart interventions as well as agricultural and agribusiness sustainable practices that preserve and encourage sustainable management of natural resources. Moreover, the promotion of green jobs and the introduction of circular economy practices (circularity) are mainstreamed in the value chain support.
OYA is supporting the project “Regeneration of Shea parklands and transformation of Shea value chains for improved livelihoods of vulnerable rural communities in Burkina Faso” by developing and submitting a project concept note to the Green Climate Fund. The project will address the impacts of climate change by restoring Shea tree parklands, promoting climate-smart agroforestry, and creating sustainable shea value chains by involving young men and women groups as beneficiaries.
Innovation and digital acceleration
OYA promotes innovation and digitalization by strengthening young entrepreneurs’ capacity to use innovative solutions and digital tools in their business models, services, and products. Moreover, the training and incubation activities have been conducted in a virtual format.
Furthermore, OYA is partnering with the startup Magnitude to launch “ExoLab-10 Carbon Farmer: Research in space for life on Earth”, a programme where the youth design scientific experiments to compare carbon cycles on Earth and in space so as to find innovative solutions to the climate change. Participants planted crops on Earth and will send the same seeds to space in October to compare crop growing in the two environments.
OYA in the context of COVID-19
COVID-19 has plunged the world economy into a recession with the potential of deep consequences and historical levels of unemployment and deprivation weakening the already fragile socio-economic context. The pandemic came at a time when food security and food systems in the African countries were already under strain. Moreover, emerging economic recession is having a profound economic impact making the jobs and livelihoods of the rural youth highly vulnerable to the COVID-19 disruption.
The youth between 15-34 years old make up close to half of Africa’s working age population and also account for a vast majority of vulnerable agricultural and informal workers. Young people will hence be the first to feel the effects of this recession and likely the last to recover. This will have an adverse impact on the countries’ security, thus leading to the unemployed youth’s migration to foreign countries or their recruitment by militant groups. The latter enhances the risk of terrorist attacks, violent extremism and youth radicalization.
