As the world observes International Youth Day, Africa is producing a growing number of young entrepreneurs who are adopting new ideas to bring more affordable, quality food from farm to fork.

This year’s theme is “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health”, putting the spotlight on the role of young people in achieving the success of such a global effort.

“Africa’s youth play a key role in scaling up the continent’s agricultural production that can transform Africa’s food systems. On International Youth Day, we celebrate Africa’s next generation ‘agripreneurs,’ whose innovations in agribusiness are helping to feed Africa,” said Dr. Beth Dunford, Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development, at the African Development Bank.

Ikenna Nzewi is one of those agripreneurs. The Nigerian-American is CEO of Releaf, a Nigeria-based smallholder farmer food procurement company focusing on industrializing food processing in Africa. In keeping with this year’s Youth Day theme (https://bit.ly/3m1gklI), we spoke to Nzewi about his innovative enterprise.

Releaf’s innovative approach to improving food systems, is to help industrialize Africa by setting up smaller factories that are closer to farmers. It also wants to finance and teach farmers agricultural practices that make their businesses more productive.

“When the logistics costs are really high, you have to pay farmers low prices for their commodities. When you are closer by, you can afford to pay them more,” Nzewi said.

Releaf’s agribusiness plan won over a panel of judges and investors during the African Development Bank’s AgriPitch Competition, where the continent’s top agripreneurs vie for a share of $120,000 in seed funding prizes and a slot in the competition’s business development boot camp. The finalists also receive mentoring and training.

AgriPitch is part of the African Youth Agripreneur Forum, an annual event organized by the Bank’s Enable Youth program. The Forum instills a culture of innovation and nurturing for technology-led agribusiness innovations to create jobs and improve youth livelihoods. https://bit.ly/3CS2hFg

Nzewi and Releaf edged out more than 600 other business proposals from 30 countries to be named one of the AgriPitch winners in 2020. Placing first in the “early-start up” category, Releaf took home a $20,000 prize cheque.

“The grant was very helpful to operationalize our work – we started operations in January. The publicity was helpful for our company. Being able to have more people hear about…how we are tech-enabled industrialists has been really exciting,” Nzewi said.

People have been hearing about Agripitch – open to youth aged 18 to 35 who hold African nationality or citizenship – since its launch in 2017. Last year’s virtual competition drew more than 2,500 applications, compared to approximately 600 applications in the 2019 event, which awarded $74,000 in prizes.

“The interest is there – as the prize money gets bigger,” joked Enable Youth Coordinator Edson Mpyisi, adding that “youth are more willing to try out new technologies and innovations – they lead [the transformation of food systems] toward higher production and productivity.”

Africa has the largest share of young people in the world: United Nations statistics indicate that 75% of the African population is below the age of 35. About 65% of youth in Africa live in rural areas and are employed primarily in the agriculture sector.

Enable Youth is designed to empower youth at each stage of the agribusiness value chain as agripreneurs – by harnessing new skills, technologies and financing approaches so that youth can establish viable and profitable agribusinesses. The target for the program is to contribute to the establishment of 300,000 youth-led enterprises by 2025.

“We need to think of food and agriculture as a system – not as disjointed issues of poverty or food insecurity. Nutrition, water, good health, the climate, environment, trade, food as a human right – all these are interconnected. The success of young agripreneurs in Africa can help address these important social and economic issues,” Mpyisi said.

To learn more about the Bank’s previous AgriPitch competitions and African Youth Agripreneur Forums, click here (https://bit.ly/3s915s5).