Webinar: Do rural African young people have a future in agriculture?
Thursday 22 October 2020 from 13:00–14:00 (CAT)
PLAAS invites you to a webinar on “Do rural African young people have a future in agriculture?”.
The webinar will be chaired by Dr George Mudimu, PLAAS postdoctoral fellow.
Speakers are:
- Dr Elina Amadhila (University of Namibia),
- Dr Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey (University of Ghana),
- Ms Rahma Hassan (PhD Candidate, University of Nairobi), and
- Dr Ibrahima Ka (Agricultural and Rural Prospective Initiative – IPAR, Senegal).
The rural population of Africa is growing—despite a rise in urbanisation and the prospects are that it will continue to rise until at least 2040. Demographic estimates suggest that about 70% of Africa’s one billion people are under the age of 30, making Africa the most youthful continent in the world. The FAO’s estimates suggest that about 70% of Africa’s young people live in rural areas. At the current sub-Saharan Africa’s population growth rate of 2.7% a year, which is more than twice as fast as South Asia (1.2%) and Latin America (0.9%), the demographic projection suggests that Africa’s young people will continue to increase until 2035. This unabated African population growth is happening in a context characterised by high levels of rural youth unemployment, persistent intergenerational poverty, and rapid processes of change in Africa’s agrarian systems. The changes occurring in Africa’s rural areas include rapid agricultural commercialisation, growth of large-scale agriculture, increasing concentration and pressure on land, and failure of intergenerational transfers including land. They also include the expansion of wildlife conservation areas, booming mining activities and other forms of resource extraction, and massive infrastructural developments. These mega-trends have stimulated debates on whether there is a place for rural African young people in the agricultural economy as farmers or in other roles in the value chain. The webinar will discuss different aspects of this important question. The underlying policy argument of this webinar is that the current processes of change in Africa’s rural areas, whether they are engineered by the exogenous or endogenous factors, already are and will continue to shape and restructure the opportunity space of Africa’s rural young people. Policy actors need to think about the impact of their interventions in ways that are connected particularly to the question of generation.
Tune in on Thursday 22 October 2020 from:
- 11:00 – 12:00 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
- 12:00 – 13:00 West Africa Time (WAT)
- 13:00 – 14:00 Central Africa Time (CAT)
- 14:00 – 15:00 East Africa Time (EAT)
Watch the webinar here: https://youtu.be/7F2IyBMgJHE Or click below to view it.
