German Project empowers unemployed youth in agriculture

At least 7000 rural residents in five counties in western Kenya are set to benefit from a youth empowerment project dubbed the ‘Agri-jobs 4 Youth’ initiative for training in selected value chains courses in the agriculture and food industry.

The project initiative, which started in 2020, has been implementing the 360-degree approach to youth employment by working with the public and private sectors and civil societies to build the capacity of young farmers and agri-SME owners.

Facilitated and supported by the German government through GIZ, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, the programme has been developing the capacity of the budding farmers to come up with agribusiness youth ecosystems to not only provide job opportunities but also improve their general livelihoods.

Roy Odawa, team leader and co-founder of the Nyalenda slums-based Kisumu Youth Agripreneurs (KIYA), one of the five beneficiary groups under the project, says more than 3000 local youth were engaged in a six-month mentorship program that offered them skills and capacity building in agro value chain development techniques.

“Out of these 3,000 young farmers, 2,300 have started their agribusiness ventures, and from the training, 60 per cent of them have shown an increase in their productivity and income, leading to creating employment opportunities for other young people, “he said.

He noted that the program encouraged young farmers to start their own ventures with the support of the GIZ, which offered linkages to other partners to facilitate marketing of their produce to sustain the infant ventures.

Odawa observed that the youth were trained on integrating ecological farming to tackle the challenge of pest control and encourage the use of organic manure as a safe way of producing food, a technique that the farmers at KIYA use to cut the cost of production.

“Agro-ecological farming is about using organic rather than synthetic fertilizer, which currently goes for Sh6,000 for a 50kg bag, a price the small-scale farmers could not afford at their infancy stage,” he said.

Odawa explains that the group is engaged in training and growing most types of food from the African leafy vegetables, tomatoes, and cassava but has also ventured into poultry and aquaculture farming.

He says the group was also active in climate action mitigation initiatives and was breeding soldier flies to speed up the decomposition of waste materials in compost for use in farms as manure.

“We use organic waste and employ composting, a simple yet effective technique to convert waste into rich compost. The Black Soldier Fly (BSF) has the ability to break down organic matter and transform it into high-quality fertilizer and is one of the sustainable and affordable sources of protein-rich feed for plants,” Odawa said.

He explained that the group has now gone beyond just training the young farmers but wants to venture into schools.

“We have been dealing with young farmers between 18 and 35 years, but now we are moving to enlighten pupils from an early age by introducing a program of setting up farms in local public primary schools in Nyalenda

We are starting with Nyalenda to make sure that the young learners know about sustainable agriculture as early as ECD level. Most of the kids in the urban centers  only know how to cook food but have no idea how it is produced,” he explained.

He said the group had already brought teachers from eight local primary schools onboard for training on how to impart the farming skills come January next year when they will be expected to establish demonstration farms in the schools and start training the children.

Odawa at the same time commended the GIZ and the County government for including them in the Agri-job 4 youth projects that focus on youth empowerment and capacity building.

Daniel Owino, the Kisumu County Agri-nutrition officer, who has been working with KIYA, said the County government started working on an Agriculture strategy 2023-2027 to develop mechanisms to absorb some of the more than 80,000 unemployed youth aged between 18 to 35 years in the sector.

He said the unemployment rates, which stood at 49.5 per cent, were worrying, and through organizations such as KIYA, they were able to enlist 2000 youth in the program in partnership with GIZ to train around 18,000 to date.

Currently, he said the government was focusing on a three-pronged approach strategy through economic intervention by trying to make it easy for youth to access resources by establishing a county enterprise fund that will be pumping Sh50 million through one of the commercial banks.

“The assembly is working on the regulation before agreeing with the bank to multiply the amount threefold to enable the youth to acquire funds to expand their business,” he explained.

Owino explained that when GIZ came in with the capacity building and 30 per cent being youth, some of them were part of the task force that was involved in developing the youth agribusiness strategy.

“The youth convincingly made us pick the value chains and rank them, ranging from fingerling production to seedlings for vegetables that they said they can be able to do even in small land spaces, “he said.

On the KIYA group venturing into putting up small farms in schools and training school-going children, Owino said that the County will support them through a multi-sector nutrition coordination platform that focuses on nutrition for the children and also regulation for Early Childhood Education (ECD) that ensures vegetable production is in place for nutrition at the school level.

“The county government will be able to pick up and support this group that is rolling out the school program next year in all eight public schools, and once it’s done, they will be a source of mentorship when others are doing it and linking them with the stakeholders involved,” Owino said.

John Shivisi, who has been working with the AgriJobs4Youth, said they started out in five Apex youth organizations, each from the counties of Kisumu, Kakamega, Vihiga, Bungoma, and Siaya.

“The role of this youth organization was to ensure that there were conversations between the duty bearers, who are the county government and the young people, around policies and initiatives that are important for young people to be engaged in,” he said, adding that a second part was self-organization to ensure that young people can really engage actively in agribusiness.

Kenya’s agri-food sector is a crucial contributor to the economy. The youth engagement in the agriculture space, however, remains low, as only 10 per cent of their population was actively involved in farming, with the remaining 64 per cent of those unemployed largely staying idle.

Despite this untapped potential, the government priorities youth employment and skills development in agriculture through policies like the Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy (2019-2029), the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA), and Vision 2030.

By Wangari Ndirangu