Lomé, Togo, October 7, 2019//- The World Bank released the results of a study on the identification of agricultural areas with high market potential and employment for young people in Togo.
The results were presented at a validation workshop that brought together experts from the World Bank, GIZ, agricultural stakeholders, NGOs and the Togolese authorities. The study aims to support Togo, assess youth economic inclusion of options to increase their income and create new jobs.
Led by the World Bank, with a co-financing of the GIZ, the survey has highlighted nine areas that are at least promising for those who want to engage in agricultural entrepreneurship.
So the young Togolese earn more to engage in courses such as pineapple, beekeeping, aquaculture, shea butter, sesame, soybeans, mushrooms, fonio, or vegetables. Comparatively, their room for maneuver is reduced, when it comes from sectors such as cotton, coffee and cocoa, and even cashew nuts.
This, for several reasons stated by the authors of the study. If cotton is the first Togo export crop, white gold whose harvest, “painful” essentially done manually, would attract less juvenile layer, noted the World Bank team. Café-Cacao, mainly for export, is relegated to the category of the least promising sectors for youth, because of repetitive fluctuations in world prices.
If this study is still at the stage of preliminary results, it should serve ultimately to identify channels carrying value and investment needs and developing skills of actors to deal with the problem of underemployment rural youth.
“The validation of the results of this study is an opportunity for us to initiate a dialogue with private and public partners on the importance of better economic inclusion of youth in the agricultural sectors,” said Victory TOMEGAH-DOGBE, Minister in charge of grassroots development, youth and youth employment.
Same story at Hawa WAGUE Cisse, Resident Representative of the World Bank that “the promotion of value chains carriers contribute to the integration of supply and demand of labor in the sector” agriculture who has “great potential for growth and employment in Togo.”
His institution is particularly active in coaching for better economic inclusion of young people in Togo through the Job Opportunities Project for Young Vulnerable (EPV), financed to the tune of 9 billion FCFA. Recall that in Togo, the agricultural sector accounts for about 40% of GDP and over 60% of jobs.
African Eye Report
