Jongeren strategie/ Youth Strategy

Reactie

Vraag1

Agriculture is the largest employment sector although it’s also a fairly weak employer; people are under-employed, stuck in a poverty trap, or are ‘hanging in, stepping up, stepping out’ but whereby most are just hanging in. However, most countries in SSA and MENA don’t have sufficiently developed manufacturing or service sectors to absorb young people, so many will by default need to be at least part-time involved in agriculture for the coming period, whether they like it or not.
There are limited prospects of achieving much higher income in agriculture for large amounts of people, but there are more opportunities available in the areas around production. In other words, agriculture (as production) is different from food systems, which is a broader definition including input services and steps along the supply chain. This is where there is most potential of job creation in the regions you’re focusing on. The types of jobs will be in input service provision, transport, value-addition, processing & packaging, retail.
Taking a strategy to improve food systems is a win-win and so typically a government priority as it can address youth unemployment, currency loss through imports, and food security issues all at the same time. I would however recommend going a step further (which is Wageningen policy) of working on sustainable food systems, so in other words linking resilience and ecosystems/biodiversity management to this strategy as well. Governments sometimes find that challenging to bring together, but is obviously what needs to be done from a climate change perspective.

On the skills question, young people often lack business/entrepreneur skills. They may have a good understanding of agriculture from their parents, and technical skills training is often available, but what is lacking is the social / business skills in combination with technical.

Vraag2

SNV’s OYE (Opportunities for Youth Employment) programme has been running for at least 6 years and in one country (I think in Rwanda) is being used as reference to develop a national government youth employment strategy. The OYE programme provides education/training for young people.

WCDI (at Wageningen) is involved in 6 or 7 education support programmes (funded by OKP) in agriculture to better link to labour markets.

Vraag3

Three ways; first, through more ‘formal’ processes, e.g. by including youth representatives in forums, roundtables, events, as well as more permanent bodies like chambers of commerce, departments in the ministry of education, agriculture or finance, and that youth-specific constraints and opportunities are teased out in these spaces.

Secondly, and what I think is done less often, is through more ‘informal’ processes; ensuring that young women and men are involved integrally as part of ongoing projects. I say this as in many cultures hierarchy is often linked to age/gender, and so younger (women’s) voices are not heard when talking about issues within, say, cooperatives or household dynamics. So for example, when designing M&E processes of programmes, asking young women and men how they could most easily/comfortably provide feedback during programme implementation – which could be via sms, facebook or instagram, or some other social media platform, rather than the usual focus group discussions.

Finally, awards, TV shows and other initiatives that promote leadership of young people can help change attitudes and perceptions of younger generations from being ‘idle’ to being ‘change makers’. This is both about perception of others as well as self-perception.

Vraag4

The draft strategy does talk about youth as ‘young women and men’ but I would suggest to also make clear that, when looking at barriers and opportunities, it recognises that younger and older people, and women and men, will face both overlapping as well as gender/age specific issues. Making this distinction and having that as part of programme analysis and design helps tremendously in shaping intervention design.

Bijlage