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Kigali: Final recommendations have been formulated after the African Conference on Youth Employment in Agriculture as a Solid Solution to ending Hunger and Poverty in Africa: “Engaging through ICTs and Entrepreneurship”:

We, the African Youth after two days of discussion amongst ourselves as well as taking into account other comments made by our peers in the audience, we have come up with the following recommendations which we believe are most urgent right now:

To have a youth-led agricultural policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation at continental, national and local levels.

To institutionalize this conference on Youth Employment in agriculture periodically (biennial) to monitoring and assessing the progress to make necessary adjustment as needed for greater impacts;

To support our vision by providing with the education and training that will enable to compete and remain relevant in a rapidly changing agricultural sector.

To reinforce the enabling and institutional environments for inclusive integration of the youth into agriculture value chains. Policies should have a quota system to promote youth beneficiation.

AUC and partners to support agripreneurs, family farms, cooperatives, in order equip rural areas with key services (such as digital solutions, ICT infrastructure, venture capital,Tax exemption for start-ups and risk-sharing instruments) in order to attract the youth, low capital which is holistic and time friendly)

To engage partners to support youth in Agribusiness Incubation, production,value addition and access to markets.

To change the image of agriculture on marketing platforms and sell agriculture as attractive to the youth.

To support the establishment of a national platform for youth in various sub-sectors of agriculture to coordinate, sharing of knowledge and best practices at different levels.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We, the African Youth thank the Government and people of the Republic of Rwanda for hosting the Conference. We also wish to express our appreciation to FAO, AUC and all Partners for the great leadership they have shown and continue to demonstrate towards supporting the integration of the youth into agricultural value.

“The leaders believe in the youth. The youth are smart, and are capable of contributing to ending hunger in Africa”. (End)

Reference: Rwanda New Agency