Making agriculture 'sexy' and profitable to youth | Blogs Series: Agriculture, ICTs and Young Professionals

Maureen Agena shares her experiences from her recent assignment in support of the development of a gender responsive National Land Policy, facilitating women’s economic empowerment and rural employment for women, men and youth in Uganda; under the FAO project OSRO/UGA/004/UNJ "Gender-based Violence Prevention, a socio-economic response and Coordination in Northern Uganda".

Agriculture must be made 'sexy' and profitable to the youth 

It’s exactly 7:00 am GMT +3 in the morning, I hear the hoot of a car and hurriedly rush to open the gate. It is Christopher (Not real Name) the driver from a Tours and travel company in Uganda rushing to pick me up to go for field work in Northern Uganda about 400km away from Kampala the capital city. I rush back in, grab my backpack which had lots of gadgets (laptop, iPod, phone, external hard drive, Digital camera, earphones, chargers, etc) and a small suitcase before rushing to the vehicle to start a Journey to Northern Uganda; the main objective was to meet both youth and Women groups in the three districts of Amuru, Anaka and Nyowa in Acholi sub-region and forge a way of establishing an information centre. I dashed into the car and found my colleague and supervisor Ms. Janet Achora seated and ready for the Journey.
We were involved in an assignments to train women farmers and youth in Amuru, Anaka and Nwoya District in Northern Uganda to use Information technology (mainly mobile phones and community radios) to access market prices.

The truth is that these are very remote districts with no electricity and poor road networks but with a huge number of unemployed youth who spend most of their days gambling (Using playing cards), drinking local brew and selling charcoal got from cut and burnt trees.

As we drove out of Kampala, Christopher asked me an intriguing question:  “Maureen what motivates you to work in rural areas with rural farmers?” He went ahead to add this “You are a young lady who should be seated in a bank or an office and not traveling long distances into rural Uganda in the name of training youth and rural Farmers”.

For a moment, I was short of words, then after about half a minute, I simply told him that I enjoyed my work. I went ahead to explain to him how important farmers are and told him that the human race could go extinct if farmers were not growing food.

 Why youth Anyway?

Uganda’s economy is dominated by the agricultural sector, which accounts for 41.6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 85% of the export earnings and 80% of employment opportunities. The trade and commerce account for only 13.2% of the GDP. However, in the recent years, Uganda   has witnessed induced   growth especially in the private sector enterprises and investments with the investments growing by 19.8% from US $ 1.21 billion in 2000 to US $ 1.45 billion in 2001.

It is also reported that Uganda has the youngest population as well as the highest youth unemployment in the world according to the World Bank report on Africa Development Indicators (ADI) 2008/2009. Fifty six (56%) of the population is under 18 years. This is an indicator that in order to achieve meaningful development programmes and projects, there is need to involve the youth and have the programs youth oriented. While the number of educated youth continues to grow worldwide, there is insufficient knowledge about the role, use and application of ICTs in Agriculture, distribution of ICT skills among youth entreprenuers and the role that ICT-based skills have in terms of future employment opportunities.

According to a recent World Bank report, Uganda has both the world’s youngest population, with more than half of Ugandans under the age of 18, and the highest youth unemployment rate: 83% in 2008. The country continues to have an extremely rapid population growth, and there are nearly 8.4 million Ugandans living below the poverty line, with the largest group of the poor being children. Despite significant investment by government and donors, figures from the Education sector continue to show that Ugandan youth - the largest population in the country – are not being served by their current educational system. Also, despite the fact that over 88% of Uganda’s Population of 33 million is rural based and depends almost entirely on agriculture at various levels of livelihoods, the youth countrywide have not been involved in many agricultural activities and yet they are the biggest users of ICTs like mobile phones, radio, Television, social media  and web 2.0 tools. Until recently, the Government of Uganda had completely excluded the youth activities in the national budget.

 Understanding the role of ICTs in an Agricultural Setting

Information and communication Technologies(ICTs) are drivers for change in Agriculture and their impact in the economic, social, cultural, political and individual spheres of life is widely accepted and recognised world over. ICTs give the young generation a whole range of opportunities; socializing & exposure, employment and conducting research among others. It is widely accepted that the use of ICTs can have a major influence on how youth practice agriculture , now and in the future. ICTs help make Agricultural practices more responsive to the diverse needs of individual farmers needs and can help make the Agric environment more conducive to clients wellbeing. ICT-based Agricultural training can also be useful in helping out- of-school youth especially the girl child who have not made it to higher institutions of learning to acquire skills like operating and maintaining computer hardware as well as carrying out ICT related businesses.

Finding ways to increase the availability of and access to financial services among the youth in both Urban and rural areas is a huge challenge and requires among other things good knowledge of entrepreneurship investment opportunities as well as the particular needs of the youth. It is therefore held that, understanding the place and role of ICTs in Agricultural based developing countries depends on recognizing that;

• Knowledge is an increasingly significant factor of production
• All Actors in the Agricultural sector are part of the evolving Agricultural system
• ICTs are essential coordinating mechanisms in global Agricultural Intiatives.

It is also important to note that expanding the use if ICTs in Agriculture will demand a more active and empowered role of the youth who constitute the biggest population here in Uganda and the ACP regions.

 ICTs for Agriculture: What role can youth Play?

Should the question be “What role can youth play”? or it should be "What role can ICTs play to make agriculture 'sexier' and more profitable for youth?"

There is no doubt that since time immemorial, AGRICULTURE has been portrayed to us (The youth) as an activity of failures in life, that requires lots of energy, that is practiced by the people in rural areas and one that is less rewarding compared to other professions like Human Medicine, Architecture, Law and Civil Engineering among others. In this way, many young people strive to become medical doctors, engineers, statician, etc. and forget that their survival depends entirely on what is produced by a farmer and that their building material and medicines are a result of Agricultural products.

However, an important step towards strengthening youth involvement in Agriculture is considering how ICTs can help build capacities and facilitate knowledge sharing that makes youth realise how profitable Agriculture can be. In this way, their negative perception about Agriculture will change.

 What do we really mean by ICTs?

ICTs cover a wide range of tools and technologies that can be used to foster development and change negative youth perception about Agriculture. These can be categorized into 3 to include:

• Traditional ICTs: Notice boards, whistles, drums, Newsletters, Newspaper,
• Mordern ICTs: Radio, Television, Camera, Internet, Computers, mobile phones,
• New Media/social networks/web 2.0 tools/New ICTs: Skype, twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, myspace, blogs, RSS etc

 Linkages between Networks, Youth, Agriculture and ICTs

• Youth contribute to the biggest population in many African Countries.
• There is need for interventions that target social and behaviour change especially the negative youth perception about Agriculture.
• ‘Information is power’ so each and every one should have a right to information and communication.
• ICTs can work as a platform for advocacy and for facilitating networking activities eg mobilizing youth to reach out to policy makers to include them in Government programs and policies.
• ICTs are useful tools for sensitization of young people on the need to engage in Agriculture and on how profitable it can be.

 The youthful Poultry Farmer who believes that ICTs are the way to go for Agriculture.

Mr Bernard K. Wopata has a degree in Business Administration and Management. However, unlike many young men who rush to look for jobs in financial organisations like banks, micro-finance institutions and insurance companies, Bernard decided to start a Poultry farm which he named (+VALUE Farm) with the “+” representing “Positive”. With 250 chicks (Layers), Bernard set off from Kampala to Masindi district about 280Km towards Northern part of Uganda where he was going to start this challenging venture. He had never received any formal training on how to breed and take care of layers from infancy to maturity. He was ready for the challenge if that’s what could bring him money and save him the burden of job hunting.

He lost a few birds during the first weeks and four months later lost over 100 birds that died as a result of delayed vaccination. At the end of the 6th month he only had 45 birds left. He almost lost all the hope because he had struggled buying their feeds, vaccines and hiring a couple of youth to help him out with some work. Despite all these challenges, Bernard managed to reap out of the few birds that remained and later sold them off before acknowledging that he needed basic training on poultry farming.

When I recently spoke to Bernard about Agribusiness, he said that all he needed was to learn how to use more of ICTs to link up with fellow farmers and learn best practices from them. He was also quick to inform me that he had been offered a place to attend the web 2.0 training Learning opportunity by CTA next month at NARO in Uganda http://www.web2fordev.net/component/content/article/1-latest-news/132-web2lo-naro-uga. He believes that it will be a breakthrough for him as he will learn how to use web 2.0 for development, which development to him is “Agricultural Development”. He thanked me for sharing the information on the web 2.0 learning opportunity in Uganda. This is what Bernard said in conclusion. “The future of the youth in Africa is in Agriculture so the earlier they realize this, the better for them”
Bernard can be reached @ khatikhiraben@gmail.com

 Conclusion

The importance of ICTs to Agriculture is nothing new, and many traditional methods of managing and communicating information will continue to remain as crucial. ICTs will continue to improve and enhance social networking at community, regional and National levels which in turn will result into cost reduction, increased production and easy access to markets.

 Resources:
http://tinyurl.com/6k29bdy
http://www.eprc.or.ug/pdf_files/youthforumcn.pdf
http://blog.ygproject.org/2009/10/14/youth-employment-sln-3-in-uganda/

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Maureen Agena is a trained citizen Journalist, new media enthusiast and trainer. Her passion for new media and community development earned her an opportunity to work as a Remote intern for the ICT and Innovation programme at The Technical Centre of Agriculture and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), Netherlands.

She is so passionate about using new media for development. (ICT4D). She was one of the East Africa Regional winner in the 2010 ARDYIS Youth Essay Contest  and a receipient of the Canadian Commonwealth scholarship for my MSc in Information Systems at St. Mary's University in Canada. Maureen works as the information and communication officer for Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET).