Thato Moagi on attracting youth to work in agriculture
Thato Moagi spoke at a panel that looked into different initiatives that support women’s empowerment and their contribution to advancing SDG5. She is a young entrepreneur that creates opportunities for young entrepreneurs. Highly educated, she realized that her and many of her peers do not have suitable education that enables them work on and manage a farm. So took the risk and invested in her own incubation farm.
Incubation farm for skills development
Her farm offers the opportunity to educated young people to obtain useful on- and off-farm skills. They stay for a year on the farm and receive hands on guidance and experience. After they finished the year of training, they are prepared to become successful agripreneurs with the needed skills in business administration, IT and farming practices. Many move on to other farms, where they support established farmers with innovation and business administration tasks. Others establish their own farms and train other youth.
The interest in the project from the youth is exceeding the capacity of the incubation farm. But it does come to show that young people are interesting in agriculture and can be successful in the sector. The effects of the project can be scaled up by facilitating the access to training and resources such as land.
Women's empowerment and agribusiness
There is a knowledge gap on the extent to which donor-supported agribusiness initiatives engage with the gender transformative agenda. The Global Donor Platform for Rural Development commissioned a study focusing on Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) in agribusiness initiatives under the gender work stream, to enhance the inclusiveness of agribusiness portfolio.