Experts in the agricultural sector have urged youths in the country to seek knowledge-driven information to enable them to identify and leverage opportunities in the agricultural sector.
The experts who spoke at the Lagos Business School/Agrafair Agribusiness Youth Summit event held recently in Lagos said that Nigeria will only grow its agribusiness sector when youths begin to recognise that problems are opportunities to create wealth.
According to them, equipping youths with the needed knowledge to transform the sector will help boost government efforts at shifting the focus of youths from white-collar jobs to agribusiness as well as reduce rural-urban migration.
“It is very difficult for the youth currently to identify opportunities in the agricultural sector because they are not engaged in a knowledge-driven information environment where they can pick a thing or two that will drive whatever they already have,” said Ike Kelikume, agribusiness programme director, LBS.
“Youths need to grab the knowledge and information needed to address problems and close gaps because the gaps are the opportunities they need to leverage,” said Kelikume.
He noted that to sensitise youths and make the sector attractive to them, LBS runs a program to help people see challenges as opportunities.
“We run a program here which sensitises the mindset of youths to see that every challenge in the sector is an investment opportunity,” he further said.
“For youths to be able to play in the space they must be able to seek knowledge, test and drive it,” he added.
He attributed youth restiveness in the country to the high rate of idle people, stressing that it will have a devastating effect on the economy if the country fails to address the issue.
He noted that agribusiness is the only sector currently doing well to grow the Nigerian economy, thus, making it imperative to sensitise people and push them into the space, he says.
Also speaking during the event, Osinowo Olowolabi, managing director of Kartlos Farms Limited said there are lots of opportunities in the sector that youths can tap from.
“There are lots of opportunities across the value change from processing, packaging through to logistics,” Olowolabi said.
“Currently, our agriculture is still involved in a lot of drudgery and this would make it unattractive to the youths. The average Nigerian youths want to be involved in a profession where they see others there making it financially and that involves innovation,” he said.
He urged the government to provide the needed infrastructures that would help reduce production cost, thereby making agribusiness profitable to impact farmers’ livelihoods.
Similarly, Njideka Anyanwu, co-convener of Agribusiness Youth Summit said: “We are here basically to bridge the knowledge gaps so that youths can effectively engage themselves in agribusiness.”
“Most youths believe that agribusiness is the same thing as agriculture and it is basically for the poor and old people. But we are changing all that now so that they can have a mind shift that opportunities abound in the sector they can leverage to create wealth,” she added.
She noted that the government has been doing a lot in ensuring that the sector becomes more attractive to the youths through various support programmes, stressing that the youth just needs the vital knowledge to leverage the opportunities.
Josephine Okojie
