By
Iddi Yire, GNA
Sogakofe (V/R), 05
Dec, GNA – Professor Eric Danquah, Founding Director of the West Africa Centre
for Crop Improvement (WACCI), University of Ghana (UG) has reiterated that
agribusiness is a game changer to Ghana’s youth unemployment issues.
Professor Danquah,
who is also the 2018 Laureate, Global Confederation of Higher Education
Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences (GCHERA) said with the
burgeoning youth populations and rising youth unemployment rates in Africa, the
contribution by agriculture to poverty reduction would only be sustained by the
inclusion of youth in the sector.
He said that some
challenges facing the agriculture sector in Africa are low technical and
entrepreneurial skills, limited opportunities, and inadequate awareness of
agriculture by the youth.
He said with
agriculture being the economic base for many African countries, it was a sector
that could absorb the majority of unemployed youth as skilled and semi-skilled
labour.
He said that many of
the youth could be empowered to start their own businesses in the area of
commodity value chains of the several important crops that feed the people of
Africa.
Prof Danquah made
these remarks in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Sogakope in
the Volta Region on the sidelines of the opening of a four-day workshop on
Cowpea Value Chain Development in Ghana.
The WACCI’s
workshop, on the theme: “Shaping the Future of Cowpea Value Chain Development
in Ghana”, was organised under its African Union – European Union funded
project.
The workshop
registered over 50 participants selected from key institutions including cowpea
producers and marketers, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Stanbic Bank,
Fidelity Bank, Alliance for Science Ghana, Ghana Chamber of Agribusiness,
University of Ghana, Grains and Legumes Development Board (GLDB), Council for
Scientific and Industrial Research – (Crops Research Institute and Savanna
Agricultural Research Institute), the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology and the University for Development Studies.
Prof Danquah said
Ghana’s population would grow to an estimated 60 million by 2063 when Africa
was expected to become an industrialized continent, with the youth constituting
about 60 per cent of the population and it would be risky not to empower them.
He said it was in
this light that WACCI is leading the conversation of commodity value chains on
a number of key crops that hold the key to Ghana’s agricultural transformation
if developed.
He said that through
the recently inaugurated Kofi Annan Enterprise for Agricultural Innovation,
WACCI would lead a consortium of partners, both public and private, to turn the
promise into reality by equipping the youth with the knowledge and skills
needed for them to birth ideas and turn their ideas into start-ups.
The Founding
Director told GNA that cowpea offered opportunities for agribusinesses and it
was important that the value chain was properly developed.
He said the focus
should be on how to process the cowpea crop into various types of foods and
products, adding that “elsewhere, like Nigeria one can find over 10 different
diets and products made out of cowpea.
Prof Danquah called
on stakeholders to work hard and also engage the government to re-energize the
political will for the agricultural transformation underpinned by good science,
technology and innovation.
GNA
