Cultivating crops and careers

ISpring! Well, more significantly, it is farming season. And as the idiom goes, it is time to ‘make hay while the sun shines’ by tapping into agriculture for personal and national growth.

No better time than now as a startling report this week claimed that the formal sector can only employ about 1 000 emaSwati a year. This sobering report is a testament that self-employment remains a vital curative to the unemployment cancer that has besieged the country and many other nations after the COVID-19 pandemic. And with this antidote, agriculture is the sector most likely to absorb many despite its lack of appeal to youth in previous years.

One writer once quipped, “youth want to cultivate careers, not crops.” Rightly put. There has never been anything appealing about this sector to some of us, but it is critical to any economy and food security.

If there is anything that the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us of, it is that not only is this sector an essential one, but it is also one that can withstand even the worst of times.

The viability of the agriculture sector is unquestionable. I recall many years ago, with a business plan for a television studio, one financial institution official frankly said to me, “what if this thing doesn’t work? What will we do with your equipment? We can’t successfully auction something useless that has failed in the market.” He went on to show me stacks of credit applications for agriculture which had been approved. He

T’S

said, “perhaps think agriculture, and we can talk.” I could not imagine being in the field with boots and mud. The few years I did it in school were enough.

However, I did enjoy the produce. I walked away, never to attempt the credit application process again. But fast forward to 2022, agriculture suddenly looks very appealing. Just like that high school classmate who did not look so cute growing up and has suddenly glowed up in adulthood, this is the way to go now and here is why.

An agriculture expert believes that an African agricultural revolution can help advance the continent’s development progress and solve the growing challenge of youth unemployment, especially in rural areas.

Dr Dennis Rangi, Director General, Development at CABI, shares

his views on the potential for Africa’s youth in agriculture in a feature titled A Double Win: Revolutionising African agriculture to empower youth and sustain the continent’s development.

SUSTAIN

“Africa’s youth hold the key to the continent’s very survival and the burden to sustain wider global development. But we simply cannot rely upon young people to be only producers of food. Through upskilling and a digital ‘knowledge exchange’, they must also be involved across all stages of the value chain – starting from production,” he said. As an accounts, marketing, logistics or even human resource graduate, this sector’s value chain is waiting for you. Agriculture products need logos, so graphic designers can tap into the value chain. It requires drivers to transport the produce and personnel; hence, it would need human resources. The are no limits to its wide value chain.

Dr Rangi added that agriculture has long been the dominant sector in much of Africa regarding output, employment and export earnings. “In fact, agriculture is arguably the most important business opportunity for the continent’s young people to embrace,” he affirmed. He reiterated the issue of the value chains saying that we need to look wider at young people’s roles in agricultural value chains.

He said we need to take a ‘twopronged’ approach to enhance their skills in producing safer foods free from crop pests and diseases and involving them as village-based advisors. They could also combine these roles to tackle the ever-increasing food crisis.

I was excited about agriculture this week when I saw two posts from young tomato farmers on social media. One of them was showing his produce at the local supermarkets, while the other was showing crates of tomatoes under the caption, ‘no one farms more tomatoes than me, and I will satisfy the whole of Shiselweni.’ This kind of approach is awe-inspiring.

Be that as it may, many young people still are not convinced to try this sector, especially after rejection from previous attempts to enter a business that did not yield the expected results. Last week we read a tear-jerking article entitled ‘E27m idle in the bank while youth starves’ about how the Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund was questioned by the Public Accounts Committee on lack of fully distributing funds to young people. The article claimed that only E2 million was distributed of the E29 million allocated. The reason given to PAC was that the youth failed to produce viable business plans; hence they could not qualify for the loans. I do not know which youth those are. The youth I have mentored or judged at business competitions usually have business plans worthy of getting funding, even at the World Bank.

PLANS

When Eswatini competes even at the high school level in terms of business plans, they are usually number one in the African competition, at worst, number two. So I wonder which young people cannot write business plans, and if they can’t, what stops them from being capacitated, corrected, and granted the funds.

The good news, though, is that partnerships have since been established with the likes of UNESWA to capacitate those applying for those loans.

These partnerships should absorb all the youth, not just a few, so that this E29 million is exhausted and jobs are created.

At the end of the day, if one 25-year-old starts a thriving company, they are likely to eventually employ others in future and reducing the unemployment burden on society and agriculture is one sector not to be overlooked.

A United Nations report states that Rural youth recently reported that access to information, lack of credit and negative perceptions around farming are the leading reasons why African young people are leaving small farming at such high rates.

The report states that a ‘revolution’ in agribusiness involving Africa’s youth is required to capitalise on the sector’s contribution to around 25 per cent of the continent’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 70 per cent of its employment. With support, young people need to meet these challenges head-on to leave a lasting and sustainable legacy for generations.

Coming closer to home, one of the positive headlines I read was about the subsidy for farmers by the government.

REDUCED

In July 2022, a story under the headline ‘Inputs Contributions For Farmers Reduced,’ the Times of Eswatini reported that the Ministry of Agriculture had partnered with the National Maize Corporation (NMC) to ensure that the nation gets farm inputs at reduced rates this ploughing season.

It stated that unlike in previous years when farmers contributed 50 per cent, they would this year contribute 35 per cent, and the government would settle the rest. The Minister of Agriculture, Jabulani Mabuza, elaborated that this was in preparation for the upcoming ploughing season. While this has its good and bad sides depending on which part of the value chain you are, it looked good to me as a non-specialist. With agriculture extension offices nationwide and National Agricultural Marketing Board (NAMBoard) also available with free information on how to tap into this sector, perhaps giving them a ring on which crops are viable this season would not be a bad start.

And ultimately, with more such initiatives, perhaps agriculture will no longer look like just a sector where people cultivate crops but actually also cultivate careers and jobs.