Africa: Nurturing Young Entrepreneurs as the Next Generation of Hunger Fighters
Des Moines, Iowa — Considered the "Nobel Prize of agriculture," the World Food Prize is awarded each year for a specific and exceptionally significant contribution to the production or distribution of food. This year, the prize was awarded to Akinwumi Adesina, a former Nigerian Agriculture Minister - and currently the President of the African Development Bank - for his contributions to increasing productivity in that country's agricultural sector.
A list of Adesina's achievements as Minister of Agriculture from 2010 to 2015 spans several pages. But for the World Food Prize, the focal point was his introduction of the Electronic Wallet (E-Wallet) platform to Nigeria's food production and distribution chain.
Through the E-Wallet, Adesina pioneered a new way for the Nigerian Government to deliver subsidised farm inputs, such as fertiliser and seeds, to local farmers through private agrodealers. The farmers, in turn, get to redeem these subsidised inputs from the agro-dealers using e-vouchers, which they can access through their mobile phones.
To implement the platform, Adesina initiated a Growth and Enhancement Support Scheme (GES). He powered the scheme by orchestrating the successful registration of more than 15 million Nigerian farmers, whose information and mobile phone numbers were added to the GES database. The database, coupled with the E-Wallet, now allows Nigerian farmers to receive directly from the government everything from fertiliser to high-yield rice seeds and palm oil seedlings.
In the past, such subsidised inputs would have bypassed the farmers and fallen into the hands of black marketers who would have sold the inputs on the open market or in neighbouring countries. According to the World Food Prize, through the E-Wallet Adesina succeeded in breaking the "back of corrupt elements that had controlled the fertiliser distribution system for 40 years."
The platform also helped solve other previously intractable problems in the way of commercial large scale food production in Nigeria.
For example, the country's paddy rice farmers, through the E-Wallet, were able to receive from the government award-winning, high yield NERICA rice varieties, which saw their output rise from five to six tons per hectare. Thousands of paddy farmers producing a consistent grade of rice soon created the opportunity for several agro-based companies to switch from rice importation to local rice production, and standardisation of the country's rice output led to large private sector investments in rice milling.
The World Food Prize compares the spread of Adesina's efforts in scale to the "Green Revolution" work of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug. In the 1970s and 1980s, Borlaug introduced high-yield dwarf wheat to Latin America and Asia, spawning "Green Revolutions" on two continents.
As other African countries start to adopt E-Wallet platforms to get subsidised inputs - and even financial services - directly to their farmers, the World Food Prize claims Adesina's E-Wallet is "sparking a Borlaugian 'Take It to the Farmer' revolution across Africa." Farming creates jobs for young people
In his more recent job as President of Africa's premier multilateral development finance institution, the African Development Bank (AfDB), Adesina embraces the continent's "youth bulge" both as an opportunity and a resource in working for economic transformation.
Africa's labour market is expected to absorb 11 million youths every year for the next decade. Despite rapid growth in formal wage sector jobs, the World Bank estimates that most of the continent's young people "are likely to work on family farms and in household enterprises, often with very low incomes."
Adesina wants to drive Africa's economic transformation by empowering the continent's youth population and making agriculture the hottest startup sector for young people. To achieve this goal, he wants to change the perception of agriculture in Africa from being a survival activity to a vehicle for wealth creation; from a hobby to a business.
It therefore, came as no surprise when Adesina, halfway through his acceptance speech for the World Food Prize, declared to the crowded room in the American Midwestern city of Des Moines that "there will be no rest for me until Africa feeds itself, and for that we need the youth.
"Even though I don't have the check in my hand right now," he continued, "I hereby commit my quarter of a million dollars... prize award to set up a fund fully dedicated to providing grants, fellowships and financing for the youth of Africa in agriculture as a business."
Adesina's vision for Africa's youth and agriculture becomes prescient as the world's geopolitical winds shift the focus of policymakers.
Britain's Brexit vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States mark a rightward shift in the geopolitical landscape, with increasing numbers of countries appealing to more nationalistic agendas and responding to calls to stem immigration.
Creating jobs for young people in agriculture can both help Africa's economic transformation and offer a solution to some of the challenges facing the continent and the world: the high rate of youth unemployment in Africa; human trafficking and the high rate of illegal migration of young Africans into Europe; sustainably kickstarting Africa's industrialisation; and preventing religious radicalisation and combating terrorism.
On youth unemployment and illegal migration to Europe
Africa's rapid population growth, specifically the growth of the working-age population, complicates a precarious labour market characterised by poor-quality employment, which in turn creates the urge for the youth to seek better opportunities elsewhere. The International Labour Organisation estimates that in the next four years an additional 12.6 million youth in sub-Saharan Africa will enter the labour force.
Data from the International Organisation for Migration reveals that more than 154,000 young Africans have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in 2017 so far. More than 2,900 have died trying to make the crossing. In 2016, more than 352,000 Africans crossed into Europe and more than 4,750 died.
Adesina, in remarks leading up to the 2015 Action Plan for African Agricultural Transformation conference in Dakar, pointed out that "the agricultural sector (in Africa) has four times the power to create jobs and reduce poverty than any other sector.
"That is why we make the claim that we can diminish the migrant crisis in Europe by supporting agricultural transformation in Africa," he said.