Government to support youth to get into agribusiness
As
part of effort to address this challenge, the Ministry of Agriculture has
rolled out a Sh2.2 billion government fund to support youth to establish
agribusiness enterprises.
Youth
unemployment remains a serious challenge in Kenya with the youth comprising 67
percent of those without jobs.
This
problem is exacerbated by underemployment and poor quality jobs in the informal
sector. The trends indicate that over one million young people enter the labor
market annually but only a few get into meaningful employment.
This
will be implemented through the Empowering Novel Agribusiness-Led Employment
(ENABLE) Programme that is co-funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and
the government, whose main objective is to create gainful employment, generate
income for the youth and bridge succession gap in agribusiness and related
value chains.
“A
number of challenges that hinder youth engagement in the sector have been
identified and include negative perception and attitude to agribusiness and
limited access to financial services,” says Agriculture Chief Administrative
Secretary Anne Nyaga.
The
implementation of the ENABLE Youth Kenya Programme is taking place in Youth
Agri-Business Incubation Centres (YABICs) at identified government centres and
also in partnership with the private sector across the country.
The
YABICs operate using an incubation model for agripreneurship. The model
involves training, nurturing, mentoring, coaching and financing of incubatees.
The incubation process follows three key phases- pre-incubation, incubation and
post-incubation for a period of between three to 12 months.
ENABLE
Youth Kenya Programme has a financing component that seeks to support
youth-owned agribusinesses by facilitating access to capital through financing
and risk-sharing mechanisms. The programme will finance youth agripreneurs
through three financing mechanisms.
The
mechanisms include interest-free loan to finance up to Sh500 million to youth
for start-ups, soft loan where Sh900 million will be committed in the form of
low-interest credit to the incubation graduates at an interest rate of five
percent and the Risk Guarantee Fund where Sh800 million will be for a risk
sharing fund, which will provide back-stopping support to financial
institutions to make available up to Sh5 billion as commercial loans to
agripreneurs.
“To
this end, the youth have a chance to transform the agriculture sector and bring
the anticipated growth in the economy of this country,” said the CAS.
Ms
Nyaga said that despite the aspirations and efforts both by the government and
the private sector to involve the youth in the agriculture sector, there is
still low youth participation in various value chains in the sector.
The
Kenya Youth Agribusiness Strategy was developed by the Ministry and it aims at
enhancing coordination, promoting innovativeness and sustainable employment for
the youth through agribusiness.
The
main objective of the rigorous incubation process is to ensure the
sustainability of the Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) the
incubatees are to establish.
The
target is to train and empower 10,000 agricultural entrepreneurs (agripreneurs)
directly and create employment opportunities to another 50,000 youth along the
value chains.
The
CAS said that the agripreneurs that will not be successful will be better
positioned to enter the professional agriculture jobs market and find
employment with the private sector.
She
said the government takes cognisance of the burgeoning youthful population
which needs attention adding that several areas of youth engagement have
continually been highlighted and efforts put in place to assist the youth.
“With proper harnessing and equipping with the right skills, training and mentorship, job creation in many sectors of the economy, the youth are capable of transforming Kenya into a middle income country by 2030,” she said.
Reported by https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/
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