Project Summary

Project General Description

This intervention is designed in response to the high demand in African cities for affordable, locally sourced, healthy and nutritious food. The project will address unemployed youth and those youth in early start-up stage who have not gained traction due to limited skills and financial resources. It will offer them the opportunity to accelerate their businesses. The project will advance the uptake of modern and climate smart technologies for urban food production and processing, and accelerate their scaling up to attain positive health, economic, environmental and social impacts as well as build resilience against climate shocks which are increasing in frequency and intensity. It comprises four main components namely: (1) Agripreneur Incubation and Training (On-farm), (2) Youth Agripreneurs Skills Development (Non-farm), (3) Catalyzing Access to Finance and Market and (4) Project Implementation (including Coaching, Mentoring, Outreach, Reporting and Audit).

Project Objectives

The goal of the project is to create jobs and provide incomes for African youth who are attracted to urban agriculture but are not able to get jobs, capital, or credit to establish or operate their agribusinesses. They are often discriminated against due to lack of collateral. The specific objectives of the project are to: (1) Empower city based graduate youth and early start-up MSMEs to establish bankable enterprises through business incubation and access to financial products and services; (2) Empower African youth with agribusiness technical skills, knowledge (including on climate smart agriculture practices), technologies and market networks; and (3) Provide professional mentorship and coaching to youth through role models and mentors to address the uncertainties and risks inherent in all new enterprises.

Beneficiaries

The target beneficiaries of the project are direct unemployed graduate youth (120 per country – DRC, Nigeria and Uganda), aged 18-35 years (50% men and 50% women), other youth to be directly employed as farm workers and assistants, youth receiving indirect jobs, indirect participants (traders, artisans, etc.) in the value chain, urban consumers of fresh vegetables, poultry products and processed foods, agro-dealers and input suppliers impacted by trade, smallholder farmers living adjacent to the enterprises through extension outreach including SMS advisory services on best practices including climate smart agriculture, market aggregation and access to finance. Governments will benefit through increased tax revenues from increased commerce and savings in foreign exchange on import of foods and fossil fuels which will be reduced through reduced transportation of agricultural goods hauled from rural areas to the cities. Financial institutions through increased bankable pipelines and lending volume of portfolios. Other agricultural value chain actors including government ministries, industries, and offtakers.

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