The half-day event attracted a variety of practitioners, including representatives from the Embassy of Finland, AgriProFocus, ICCO- cooperation, IFAD, the United Nations World Food Programme, the Digital Rogue Society Experiment Group, NIRAS AgroBIg, World Vision, Plan International, ASDA, the French Embassy in Ethiopia, MEAE France, and UN-Habitat/GLTN. The key role, however, was played by twelve young agripreneurs from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Niger, Chad, Zambia, Botswana and Cameroon, who shared experiences about their professional every-day lives and highlighted the challenges and needs of making a living in rural areas.

After the Global Donor Platform’ Secretariat informed the participants about the activities and objectives of its Rural Youth Thematic Working Group, Oriane Barthélemy of MEAE France gave a presentation on the G7 framework on Decent Job Creation for Rural Youth in the Sahel. The G7 framework will focus on supporting opportunities and strengthening rural youth capabilities for decent jobs.

Peter Wobst of FAO gave a presentation on technical tools and approaches for youth employment in rural areas with examples from FAO’s work. FAO’s mandate includes tackling the challenges faced by young rural people, including education, skills, access to productive resources, and most importantly, the inclusion of young people in policy dialogue. The presentation also covered their Integrated Country Approach, which addresses the demand and supply side of employment creation by promoting an enabling environment and enhancing the capabilities of young people in food systems with approaches adapted to different country contexts.

A presentation from Isidora Markicevic, from UN-Habitat/GLTN, gave insights into their youth and land responsiveness criteria. The criteria is a simple and practical method to assess the capacity of land-related assumptions, policies, frameworks and projects to respond to the needs and concerns of youth regarding land. It has five main categories of questions and themes: (1) youth recognition; (2) land information; (3) land governance and participation; (4) inclusive land policies; and 5) land use and access.

The event also featured a panel discussion that brought together different panellists including youth representatives and development partners and practitioners. The panellists were Sarah Assefa of AgriProFocus (Ethiopia), Oriane Barthélemy of the MEAE France, Fatime Africa of Africa Youth in Agriculture Association (Chad), and Justus Muli from Kibwezi Hortipreneurs Youth Group (Kenya), who looked at challenges and approaches to decent job creation for young people.

The side event featured a breakout session where participants held round table discussions on different areas affecting decent job creation for rural youth. They developed concrete ideas on four topics:

The eye-level discussions with youth representatives helped donor representatives and practitioners from implementing organisations gain first-hand insight on the experiences of youth in different country situations and allowed them to understand what type of interventions would be appropriate to address the issues raised. For example, participants talked about equipping youth with various skills and noted that there is a big difference between education systems, youth interests, and aspiration. There was a consensus that youth also need to develop personal and business skills, not only production skills.

The conversation around youth and access to land also brought to light the difference challenges in accessing land in different areas. Youths in Nigeria tend to sell their land to developer and refrain from agricultural activities, as they doubt that they can make a decent income from farming. In Chad, land is owned by men, prohibiting access to women. Additionally, in Kenya, it is easy to lease land for agriculture but once one has worked to make it productive, the owner can easily take it back after realising its productive potential.