Mastercard Foundation has announced plans to create at least 30 million work opportunities for 30 million young Africans by 2030.
The move, according to the foundation, is to harness the capacities of the continent’s active and vibrant youths to create employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for economic growth and development.
The Country Head, Nigeria, Mastercard Foundation, Chidinma Lawanson, at the Agribusiness investors network organised by the Innovative Youth in Agriculture (I-Youth), said the foundation has identified agriculture, creative and digital sectors to achieve the fear.
“Come 2030, we want to create at least 30 million work opportunities for 30 million young Africans. We have already started to implement this in seven countries. We are in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria,” she said.
She went further saying, “Youth employment is very key for us because Africa has a vast population and we can harness their capacities to create employment or entrepreneurship opportunities. In Nigeria, we have identified three sectors that we should play in. 70 per cent of our work is in agriculture, so we have to create seven million work opportunities by 2030, 20 per cent in the creative industry and 10 per cent in the digital economy space.
“Agriculture is at the core of what we do, but for the other countries, their main focus is agriculture. We work with strategic partners to carry out strategies. Agriculture is a strong focus for us in Nigeria because it leads to the federal government’s implementation strategies in the medium and long-term approach and it ensures that we have food security and a space that can create employment opportunities for the teeming unemployed youths.”
She stated that the challenge of agriculture for the youths is that they only think in terms of drudgery, saying that they are automatically attracted to the creative sector and not to agriculture.
“For the 30 million work opportunities, we are targeting 70 per cent of women. There are women who drop off due to childbirth, they do not go up the ladder in the entrepreneurship world and there are so many cultural and religious barriers that stop them from being their best and removing them from the shackles of poverty,” she said.
Earlier, the Deputy Director-General, Corporate Services, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ms Hilde Koper, said for the last 10 years in IITA, they have put a lot of effort into trying to make innovations and technologies available to the market.
“We have also put a lot of effort in attracting youths back into agriculture. We want to commend the Mastercard Foundation for the role they played by funding a project for young Nigerians to get access to agribusiness training,” she said.
She said IITA sees young agripreneurs as the future of agriculture development in Nigeria.
“As a research institute, we cannot do the scaling all by ourselves. We need the private sectors and other actors to come in and that is why we are here. Young agripreneurs have the training, knowledge, skills, drive and energy, but often do not have the necessary funding to start agribusinesses. Young people can do a lot, but they need help in investing in their ideas and set up agribusinesses,” she said.
She added that investing in agriculture in these proven times is crucial, saying that it is important to understand the impact of food imports on the African economy, climate change and welfare.
She stated that the Covid-19 and the current Russia-Ukraine conflict have shown the importance of having the agricultural sector locally developed and the disadvantages of relying on food imports.
She pointed out that in today’s world and the not so easy future, she said IITA is the future of Nigeria using its vast land, young population and innovations available.
