By Agripreneurs Conference 2019
Implementing youth focused employment initiatives and fostering entrepreneurship is key to addressing Africa’s dire youth unemployment stats. Across Africa, unemployment levels remain high despite diverse job creation initiatives. There are 200 million Africans aged between 15 and 24 that make up more than half of the unemployment statistics on the continent. According to the UN, the world’s population will have grown by 2.2 billion and half of those people will be Africans. This carries huge and wide-ranging implications from labour force to food security and poverty alleviation interventions.
South Africa Employments Stats 2nd Quarter 2018
In South Africa, one of the continent’s biggest economies, statistics recently released for this year’s second quarter, which showed that youth unemployment in the country had risen to 52.4 percent in the first quarter, from 51.1 percent of last year’s fourth quarter. The official unemployment rate increased by 0,5 of a percentage points to 27,2% compared to the first quarter of 2018. These stats are a general trend across the majority of budding economies around Africa.
Africa needs a way out of poverty and Agripreneurship may be key. It has the potential to create millions of jobs in Africa and youth entrepreneurs may bring about the positive change we urgently need in the continent.
Agripreneurship Can Feed Africa
The continent remains a net importer of food, although it has 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land. A population bursting to its seams in urban has seen, agricultural production and food security struggled to keep pace. Africa will have a population of 2 billion by 2050, and agriculture will be central to feeding all of those people. Africa is the only continent where the number of undernourished people has increased over the past 30 years.
Agricultural entrepreneurship will help create millions of jobs while pulling subsistence farmers out of poverty. And although more and more youth are looking into Agripreneurship, there are many challenges facing this sector like the lack of access to finance, information, managerial expertise, legal knowledge, networking and mentoring. There should also be an ecosystem for successful entrepreneurship in agriculture, where all stakeholders from both private and public sector converge and synergize their programs and projects, with the aim of growing Agripreneurship as the game changer for prosperity and inclusive growth.
The Game Changer
Enter the Agripreneurs Conference 2019 to be held on 06 – 07 June at Emperors Palace South Africa. The Conference is theme, “Upscaling Agribusiness Start-ups”. It is an Africa-wide platform bringing together food and agribusiness stakeholders and players to facilitate the acceleration process for Agripreneurs and Start-ups.
Among the Speakers at the Conference will be Gieljan Beijen, the Business Development Manager at iCRA, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
Gieljan Beijen, Business Development, iCRA
Gieljan will talk on Fuelling the potential of youth from student to Agripreneur. His focus the exciting and challenging journey to start an agro business. Among many key helps, he will address the following questions:
- How do you make sure you have the quality and quantity of raw products needed to meet the meets of your customers?
- How can you secure supply?
- Where do you start to build strong and trusted relationships with the right suppliers when you are young and are still building a name for yourself?
- Additionally, get a first-hand case study from work iCRA is engaged in around Africa.
Let us meet at the Agribusiness Conference 2019 and be part of this meet-up of the agribusiness value-chain, from seed to dinner plate. Attendees will meetup with regional and global producers, service-providers, captains of industry, students, faculty, investors, Start-Ups, Government and business in solution finding and business growth.
To participate at the Conference kindly follow the link to the Conference website: https://www.agripreneurs-conference.com/
Contacts:
The Registrar
Tel. and WhatsApp: +27 83 792 5017
Email: info@agripreneurs-conference.com or lwazi@agripreneurs-conference.com
