The Partnership for Africa Social and Governance Research (PASGR), in collaboration with the Centre for Africa Bio-Entrepreneurship (CABE) and Alternatives Africa, will hold a national conference to discuss challenges facing youth in agribusiness and create new ideas for creating jobs for the youth through expanding opportunities in the potato and mango value chains by scaling innovations in agriculture in Kenya.

The conference to be held from 24 –25 February 2022, will host over 90 participants drawn from the Government of Kenya, Council of Governors, National Potato Council of Kenya, Scholars, Development Partners, Practitioners and the County Governments of Makueni, Nyandarua and West Pokot.

The National Conference on Youth Employment and Creation in Kenya seeks to enhance a culture of routine evidence use in policy and programming in the agricultural sector.

Expert panellists share knowledge on requirements and opportunities for scaling digital agriculture in the potato and mango value chains to create jobs for the youth in Kenya through evidence-informed policy dialogue and information sharing.

As captured by Dr. Anthony Mveyange, PASGR Executive Director: “The conference aims to bring together all the partners and stakeholders to learn what we have found out from the research, to engage and shape the conversation and plan on the next steps after the conference.”

He added that: “After we have learnt about the research and the links between evidence and policy, we will need to plan on how to bring different practitioners and stakeholder to support the youth and specifically Kenyan youth in potato and mango value chain.”

Scaling the use of technology and innovation in the country’s agricultural value chains and food systems is necessary to keep up with the rising demand for job opportunities and income generation, especially for the youth.

For this to happen, the sector requires a new way of doing things; change in the policy environment in the utilisation of value chains, harmonisation of national and county government trade regimes, curbing of wastes along the value chains and use of evidence in decision making in the sector.

A collaborative study, through PASGR’s innovative evidence-informed decision-making programme Utafiti Sera (research-policy), on Youth Employment Creation (YEC) in Agri-business and Agroprocessing in the potato and mango value chains established that if the country fixes the sector, there is the potential to create 3.2 million jobs in the mango value chain and 3.3 million jobs in the potato value chain annually through inter-sectoral linkages: agriculture, food MSMEs, e-commerce and transport services.

Martin Atela, the Head of Research and Policy at PASGR, noted that “Such evidence-driven interventions have, can secure the much needed agricultural transformation and job creation for the youth at different stages of the value chain, including soil analysis, seed production, weeding, spraying, repair and maintenance, harvesting, transportation, value addition, aggregation, marketing, and training.”