Promoting Agriculture in Rural Africa and Supporting Young Farmers
Food is a basic necessity and is indispensable for human survival. In Africa and Cameroon in particular, agriculture is one of the most common source of income for the majority of people, especially those living in rural region and depend wholly on farming for survival.
Rural Africa or areas means territorial units with very low population density (low inhabitants living per square km). Rural areas means land is greatly available for exploitation, but on the other hand, lack of sustainable infrastructure and institutions like roads, hospitals, agriculture school, research centres can hinder better farming opportunities. The importance of agriculture in such areas are enormous.
Most young men and women will engage in this sector with ease due to the availability of the above mentioned facilities to accompany their activities.
When agriculture is carried out with the right investments, technological and infrastructural facilities without excluding the importance of available and viable markets, then it can serve as a good source of income.
Cameroon is still a developing nation and therefore primary activities like agriculture must be encouraged. Secondary or tertiary industries will function well with available products from the primary sector like farming. In Africa, food shortage is still a problem in many regions as people still suffer hardship and even starve to death due to famine. Supporting and promoting agricultural initiatives in rural regions is therefore a sustainable solution to poverty.
The increasing youth unemployment in Africa and Cameroon in particular is mainly as a result of most African government not being able to recruit all graduates. Thus, the need to encourage youth self employment. Rural agriculture is a sector that can absorb most unemployed youths through entrepreneurship. Most youths in rural Africa possess land through inheritance but most of these lands are unexploited. Youths complain of the lack of capital, good seeds or breed for production, high cost of legalizing land ownership, poor farm to market roads, poor and disorganized markets to sell their products, no storage facilities, no transformation industries etc. In ISED, we believe that addressing most of these issues mentioned above would be a sustainable way of reducing youth unemployment and encouraging entrepreneurship in the field of agriculture. That is why , since 2017 we have subsidised the training of several young men in poultry farming, gardening and plantain cultivation.
Lucas Awasum is one of the executive members of ISED and is in charge of our agricultural projects. He currently lives in Bambili with his family, a rural area located in the Northwest province of Cameroon. After studying and working in the the United Kingdom, he decided to become an entrepreneur and moved back to his home town in Cameroon. He has close to 10 years of experience in agriculture particularly poultry science. His entrepreneurial activities are mainly in the sector of poultry production alongside plantation farming.
Lucas (seen on the above picture with one of his employees) trains and employs many young men mainly under temporary conditions. According to Lucas, “depending on how the challenges mentioned earlier can be addressed, my activities alone can employ at least 10 young men under permanent conditions thus playing a role in youth unemployment.”
According to Lucas, Urban areas will always need food from rural areas. Thus, there is a need for young and ambitious men and woment to depopulate urban areas by migrating back to the villages and contributing to developing their local areas.
ISED believes that a substantial way of helping farmers and reducing poverty in local regions, is by providing them with proper equipments, fertilizers and guidance on how best to undertake their activity. We work in partnership with the local community and experts like Lucas in the agricultural field to come up with tailored solutions that align with the environment, to create bigger and possitive impact for the community.
