Perspective: Youth and the agri-food crisis: It’s time to fix the system, not just train the people

Across West Africa, millions of young people turn to agriculture not out of choice, but because there are few alternatives. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that the agri-food sector contributes up to 35 percent of the region’s GDP and provides jobs for more than 60 percent of the population. What should be a space full of promise has instead become a last resort, not because young people lack drive or talent, but because the system shuts them out.

Each year, the continent’s labour market absorbs a fraction of the millions of young people seeking work. The agri-food sector could and should be a major employer. However, land tenure, finance, market access, and policy frameworks often leave young people locked out. In development circles, we speak a lot about equipping youth with skills. The hard truth is many of them already have the skills. What they lack is access and the ability to navigate systems that were not built with them in mind.

Too many interventions still begin and end with training. Yet the evidence is clear: training without access leads nowhere. Young people frequently tell us they are already skilled, or at least capable of learning. What they need is land, capital, and the networks that older, more established actors take for granted.

This realisation shaped our Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship (YEE) programme. We recognised alongside partners that isolated support was failing to move the needle. So we asked a more fundamental question: What are the system-level conditions required for youth to not just be trained, but to succeed and stay in the agri-food sector?

This thinking informed our Access–Match–Growth–Enable model. It starts with understanding market demand, not assumptions. We then work to address the structural barriers: supporting youth to access land, finance, networks, and skills. We help strengthen business acumen, link them to markets, and, critically, engage in policy and institutional dialogue to create an enabling environment. Because without that, the best ideas and most promising businesses stall.

SNV's publication, “Good practices on job creation and youth entrepreneurship in the agri-food system in West Africa,” draws on six years of work across 17 initiatives in six countries. The core insight? Local ownership matters, because local actors understand the realities that large scale programmes often miss. Community based organisations have the trust, proximity, and contextual knowledge to engage youth who are out of school, unemployed, or otherwise excluded. Without them, interventions risk becoming top down exercises in box ticking.

Finance is another sticking point. Credit is routinely out of reach for youth without collateral or financial history. It starts with understanding market demand, not assumptions. We then work to address the structural barriers by supporting youth to access land, finance, networks, and skills, in that order. We help strengthen business acumen, link them to markets, and empower them to engage in policy and institutional dialogue to create that enabling environment. Without these, the best ideas and most promising businesses stall.

Inclusion remains one of the starkest gaps. Across the region, young women face layered barriers such as restrictive social norms, limited mobility, unpaid care responsibilities, and discriminatory land and finance systems. Tools like SenseMaker and the GESI Seal have been useful in encouraging inclusion. In Benin, SenseMaker’s data visualisation helped the Youth Employment for Food Security Improvement (EJASA) to prioritise high-impact actions such as strengthening market linkages for young agri-processors, empowering youth to co-design policies, fostering ownership and scalability, and demonstrating how localised storytelling can drive systemic change in agricultural entrepreneurship across West Africa. But tools alone cannot change power dynamics. Inclusion must be designed into the system, not added as an afterthought.

A final, and persistent, challenge: sustainability. Far too often, youth programmes are funded in short cycles, ending just as businesses gain traction. This erodes trust and undermines impact. If youth employment is to be an important priority in agri-food systems, there is a need to stop thinking in project timelines and start thinking in systems: long-term policy alignment, institutional capacity, and sustained partnerships that outlast individual grants or programmes.

What our work and learnings with our partners show, and what our publication sets out, is that there is no one size fits all model. But there is evidence to show that when youth are given the tools, space, and systems that work for them, they not only succeed but create pathways for others. SNV’s Vision 2030, the organisation’s global strategy for accelerating sustainable development in agri-food, energy, and water systems, places youth at the centre of food systems transformation. This is seen as essential to making practical and lasting progress for young people, while also enabling them to participate meaningfully in shaping the future of their communities.

If there is one message for policymakers, donors, and development practitioners as we mark Youth Skills Day 2025, it is this: beyond focusing on youth as a group to be trained, there is an urgent need to start taking a closer look at the systems that hold them back. The future of agri-food systems will not be shaped in conference rooms, but in the fields, markets, and enterprises where young people are trying every day to build a future. Our job is to start being allies in that effort and stop being gatekeepers.