Policy highlights:
- African youth have the potential to contribute to food security and economic development, especially if they are more involved in agriculture. However, they often lack the financial means to start a profitable business.
- The main challenges preventing young agripreneurs from accessing needed finance can be attributed to direct constraints – such as the lack of innovation in the formal banking industry or the lack of youth financial capabilities -, but also to general constraints including: 1) assets and social capital; 2) knowledge, information and adequate education; 3) the political process, and 4) input and output markets.
- This report identifies several key messages for policy makers: 1) youth must be trained to improve their ‘financial literacy’, which will facilitate better links between young agripreneurs and formal financial institutions; 2) the capability of financial institutions to assess agricultural sector opportunities must be enhanced; 3) African governments should produce and share reliable statistics on youth employment in agriculture and their financial inclusion; 4) policy makers should encourage special finance packages for young agripreneurs that do not require fixed collateral, e.g. by providing guarantee schemes; 5) governments should remove barriers to crowdfunding platforms, because they can effectively support young African entrepreneurs; and 6) impact investment funds should continue to be supported to ensure small agricultural business can still get capital support
