Africa must measure whether its agrifood systems create decent work for young people, not just count how many are employed, argue Alice Ruhweza, president of AGRA, and Johan Swinnen, director general of IFPRI, in a signed op-ed. The views are the writers' own.

They point to the Youth in Agrifood Systems Performance Index (YAPI), launched by the African Union with partners including AGRA and IFPRI at the ninth Africa Agriculture Science Week in July, as a tool for judging whether young people are included, empowered and able to build viable enterprises.

An 11-country pilot covering Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Eswatini, The Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia and Uganda produced an aggregate score of just 1.55 out of 5, pointing to persistent structural constraints on quality job growth, and exposed large gaps in data on opportunity, governance and resilience.

"The youth dividend will not happen simply because Africa has a young population," they write; it will come when young people have the capabilities, resources, markets, resilience and voice to build livelihoods, and measuring that honestly is "a development imperative".

Photo: Ji-Elle / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Source: AGRA