Including Africa’s young people in food systems

Over the next decade, 21 million people will join the working-age population every year in Africa south of the Sahara. By 2050, that number will rise to 30 million a year. 

The impacts of this so-called “youth bulge” are hotly debated. The trend is generating concern about potential widespread youth unemployment and political unrest. But some are optimistic that the expanding numbers of young people will drive the agricultural transformation Africa sorely needs. Neither of these narratives captures the more complex reality.

In Chapter 3 of IFPRI’s 2020 Global Food Policy Report, we examine recent findings on the economic prospects for Africa’s youth and their implications for transforming food systems. The best course of action for improving security and development in Africa, the evidence indicates, is to look beyond the needs of youth and promote inclusive growth that benefits young and old alike. 

Recent history shows that Africa’s youth bulge is not so exceptional. The share of youth in Africa’s workforce today is similar to what it was in other developing regions in the 1970s and 1980s, and Africa’s economy is at similar stages of development. 

What distinguishes Africa’s youth bulge is that the continent’s rural areas continue to experience high population growth despite rapid urbanization. As a result, the agricultural sector and rural non-farm economy will need to play a more central role in providing youth employment in Africa than they did elsewhere. This means policy makers must invest in creating better jobs in the food system and making them accessible to rural Africans of all ages, helping to reduce poverty and foster the improved well-being of rural communities.

The good news is that Africa is already moving in that direction. The recent development of food processing, trading, and other downstream components of Africa’s food system is spurring agricultural transformations across the continent. 

Raising agricultural productivity is the first step in transforming the agriculture sector. To do that, policy makers and program designers must facilitate the adoption of technologies by providing better training and education for farmers, investing in research for improved seeds and fertilizers, and making new technologies more available and accessible. 

As production rises, nonfarm jobs related to agriculture such as traders and transporters expand. Policy makers should leverage this expansion and promote farm-nonfarm linkages to further propel agricultural transformation. To help create more, and more diverse, nonfarm jobs, policy makers should invest in rural infrastructure and market development.

Eventually, agricultural transformation requires a strengthening of rural-urban linkages as nonagricultural sectors, particularly in cities and towns, become the drivers of national development. To foster these links, migration from rural to urban areas must be supported with labor-saving technological improvements in agriculture that will sustain production and prevent food prices and urban wages from rising and stalling structural change.

The scale of policy reforms and actions needed to create more and better jobs for Africa’s growing workforce is daunting, and economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic poses a new set of challenges. But the continent’s food system is already transforming and the avenues for fostering inclusion are promising. To recover from the pandemic and continue to move African economies forward, countries need policies that create economic opportunities for all—not policies that narrowly focus just on youth. 

By focusing efforts on broad-based growth in rural areas, policy makers can improve long term employment prospects for young and old alike, help whole economies flourish, and contribute to better livelihoods and well-being. 

Valerie Mueller an IFPRI Non-Resident Fellow and Assistant Professor at Arizona State University; James Thurlow is a Senior Research Fellow with IFPRI's Development Strategy and Governance Division. Julia Wilson is a former IFPRI Communications Intern.