Members of Gulu University Academic staff, other universities and TVET institutions in company of district technical staff, Operation Wealth Creation and beneficiaries at the launch last week. Photo by Arnest Tumwesige
By Arnest Tumwesige
Gulu: Gulu University has launched an ambitious agenda to use the agricultural sector as a launchpad to place young people in rewarding jobs and local opportunities.
Prof. Duncan Ongeng of Gulu University said there are many young people who are not economically engaged, and they are increasingly becoming a social problem.
“When you look around, agriculture provides an economic platform to make them vibrant. But the way agriculture is organized doesn’t give incentives for young people to get engaged in it,” Prof. Ongeng explained.
He attributed this challenge to practitioners in agricultural development who have not understood young people well enough to position them appropriately in the agricultural value chain so they can become economically productive.
In a recent survey conducted by the University, the Professor said of the 250 young people respondents, 80% said they’re not interest in taking on agriculture as an economic venture and instead they see it as for the elderly.
The reasons where that agriculture can suffer a lot of shocks including severe weather changes causing total loss which can only be tolerated by the elderly people.
Glancing into the challenge
With Uganda’s ballooning human population standing at over 45 million as of the May 2024 National Population and Housing Census, about 4 million youth aged 15–24 are not in any form of employment, education, or training.
This is just a fraction of the young people Prof. Ongeng hopes to inspire under the Transforming African Agricultural Universities to Meaningfully Contribute to Africa’s Growth and Development (TAGDev 2.0) program.
Under the 10-year program, The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) in partnership with Mastercard Foundation and Gulu University will work with Muni University, Busitema University, Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutions in West Nile, Acholi, Teso, and Lango sub-regions, and other stakeholders to co-create business solutions that enable young people to engage in decent work.
The professor, who is the coordinator of the program, emphasizes that actors in the agricultural system need to work together to develop, but also to adjust their strategies and adopt new innovations to meet the increasing challenges in communities in order to remain relevant.
“Delivering development requires the right mindset. That is an area we shall work on to ensure that key stakeholders have the mindset that can make agriculture work for young people,” he said.
The program, has three components: institutional transformation, scholarships, and research for entrepreneurship development. TAGDev is a multi-dimensional program that began eight years ago as TAGDev 1.0.
Agricultural national perspective on young people
A study conducted by the Young Leaders Think Tank on Policy Alternatives in 2015, titled Enhancing Youth Participation in Agriculture in Uganda: Policy Proposals, with support from Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, affirms the existing gaps that the TAGDev program aims to address.
The research report indicates that while agriculture absorbs a large part of the working population, the sector operates highly inefficiently, mainly due to the prevalence of subsistence farming and the perception of agriculture as a last resort.
The result is a workforce in agriculture that lacks vision and awareness of opportunities for entrepreneurship within the sector, and therefore fails to unlock its employment or economic growth potential.
While there are significant laws and policies in place, they are often undermined by either a lack of funding or poor coordination among the many actors, including the government.
Just as Prof. Ongeng pointed out the issue of land ownership where young people view elders as the sole owners of land, leaving them with limited rights and fewer opportunities in the agricultural, the think tank’s findings also identify this as a challenge that keeps young people away from agriculture.
“The conditions of land ownership and security in Uganda, the lack of adequate networks and technology to effectively build a value chain for agricultural products within Uganda and stabilize market prices, and the lack of knowledge and expertise among young agricultural entrepreneurs which is not being bridged by the current extension and training services all present significant barriers,” the report reads in part.
Different approaches needed to engage young people
Alice Lamunu, a 26-year-old resident of Kal-ali Parish in Paicho Sub-county, Gulu District, in an interview with this publication, agreed with the Gulu University Faculty of Agriculture’s concerns that young people have little connection to agriculture as an economic activity.
“A few of those who are into it only look at production for food, and a small percentage see it as a source of income. We need an approach that sets a clear environment for agriculture as a business, with value addition as a priority rather than selling raw produce,” said Lamunu, a seasonal cereal farmer.
However, Dominic Idro, the Director of Capable International NGO, believes it is about having the right approach to mentor farmers at all levels and enabling them to graduate from subsistence to commercial farming.
Idro’s argument is rooted in the fact that when farmers are enrolled in different cohorts, they are able to increase their spending for instance, in 2024, from USD 0.94 at baseline to USD 3.94 at midline after engaging in commercial farming.
“We have a comprehensive approach towards our farmers, including young people. While they may not initially appreciate agriculture as a business, our mentoring strategies have immensely changed their perspective,” Idro told GNNA.
Working in the districts of Nwoya, Lamwo, and Omoro, with over 2,000 farmers grouped in clusters, the beneficiaries undergo business mentorship, guidance and counseling on mindset change, literacy training, and agronomic best practices for two years.
Prof. George Openjuru Ladah, the Vice Chancellor of Gulu University, emphasized the importance of the program in transforming agriculture, targeting young people who are in school, out of school, in vocational institutions, or living as refugees.
Openjuru added that the program seeks to support financially constrained young people with good academic backgrounds by offering them scholarships.
