By Kimuri Mwangi
The youth have been urged to make use of different platforms including the internet to gain skills that can enable them to run agribusinesses effectively.
During the celebrations to mark the Youth Skills Day with the theme ‘Youth Skills for Peace and Development’ organized by the Kenya National Farmers’ Federation (KENAFF), Wing Farm and the Ministry of agriculture, various speakers emphasized on the need to improve skills while engaging in agribusiness. The event featured inspiring keynote speeches and interactive sessions aimed at empowering the youth to drive positive change in society as well as pointing out the opportunities available for the youth in the agriculture value chain.
The United Nations General Assembly declared July 15th as World Youth Skills Day to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship.
https://youtu.be/Wz69Nf5bzJ8?si=e8DV7Zgq2K341S4Q
“Young people require a varied skill set; these include the hard skills and even the soft skills. Most important is the need for young people to go out there because there are several opportunities that they need to take up for them to empower themselves. We are in the era of the internet where we get knowledge from varied sources, so it’s for them to get out there, empower themselves in a skill set, and be able to address a challenge. That’s the only way that they can be in business and have an income over a prolonged period,” said Huldah Too, the Head of KENAFF Young which is a department of Kenya National Farmers’ Federation focusing on empowering young people in agribusiness.
There were presentations from representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, the private sector, civil society organizations and from institutions that empower young people.
“So as we commemorate the Youth Skills Day, we give a call to all partners involved in empowering young people, because this requires collaboration of all sectors, including the government, the private sector, the civil society, organizations and educational institutions who are working hard to skill our youth to continue what we are doing and also to provide a linkage. Once they complete their education, they also need the support to be able to establish themselves and this is what we see in the incubation centers,” adds Too.
According to Kamau Njoroge the CEO Wing Farm Organization, the youth are interested in agriculture, but they do not have the skills. He adds that most youth are not aware of some of the opportunities that are available and projects that can train them to get the skills to venture into the agriculture space.
“The skills that I mean are the entrepreneurship skills in agribusiness. So as an organization, we train young people to come up with a business plan and point out to them profitable ventures that they can take up. We also train them on how to market their products. So if a user has ventured into something like dairy, we train them how to add value to the milk and come up with products such as yoghurt, cream, cheese, etc. We also train the youth on good agriculture practices, and we know that many farmers today do not practice the good agriculture practices. We also guide them on simple skills such as record keeping, monitoring and managing diseases and vaccinating animals,” opined Njoroge.
George Muturi the CEO of Comfort Worms explains where he got the skills of producing worms to feed chicken after learning that so many farmers were facing the same challenge. “I thought I could use that as a business idea to produce worms to feed my own chicken, and to sell to other farmers. So first I got my skills from the internet. Then I visited a farm which was just producing worms and selling. So, I learnt the basic skills on how I can keep the worms, what they need, what they eat, which conditions they require and So I started there. Then later I worked so much on the internet researching what other farmers are doing around the world using worms. So that is how I was able to now go into vermicomposting, because at the initial stages I was just doing vermiculture,” he said.
Arthur Muiruri is the Chairman of the Kenya Agricultural Students Association (KASA) who is pursuing a Bachelor of Agricultural Education and Extension at Murang’a University of Technology. He summed it all by pointing out four skills which he calls the 21st century essential skills.
“One of them is communication. The youth should learn how to express their ideologies in a very well-packaged way that anyone will be able to listen to them. Number two is creativity. For us young people, we need to be creative and generate ideas that are problem specific, so that we address specific problems in the society. The other one is collaboration. We should have that skill of collaborating with other people and knowing how professional interactions are conducted and conducting ourselves in that spatulated manner. And the last one is critical thinking. Before you bring out an idea, you should first critically think about the viability of whatever you are bringing to people so that it can be used to bring change,” opined Muiruri
Muiruri adds that these are some of the skills that they are committed to pass on to their 6,200 members in 58 learning institutions across the country.
