Youth in Agriculture; Perceptions and Challenges for Enhanced Participation in Kajiado North Sub-County, Kenya

Abstract

Agriculture in Kenya can develop gainful employment opportunities for youth that would enable them exploit their economic innovation and enhance equal opportunities for the male and female youth for national economic growth. Improving youth participation in the agricultural sector is thus of paramount importance for the nation to develop. Youth's interest in agriculture is however likely to be positively related to their perceptions in terms of agricultural-related activities mostly being portrayed as difficult and assumed to be meant for the ageing rural population. The relationship between youth's perception on agriculture and their participation in agriculture in Kajiado North Sub-County was poorly understood and hence the need for this study, which used a crosssectional design to collect data from 397 randomly, selected youth and 22 youth and agricultural officers. Content validity of the youth and agricultural officers' questionnaires was ascertained by extension experts while reliability was determined through a pilot test involving 30 respondents. The reliability coefficient were 0.86α and 0.80α respectively, which were above the 0.70 threshold for acceptable reliability. The study showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between youth perception on agriculture and their participation in the study area (r=0.675 p=0.01), p=.001). The study revealed youth's negative perceptions of agriculture as a reason why many did not participate in the sector; where 18.1% youth felt that there were no role models in agriculture and 17.6% claimed that agriculture was not profitable. The government and other development partners should come up with strategies of addressing the issue of negative perception that has an implication on youth participation in agriculture. Government can ensure that agricultural education and training reflects the needs of the agricultural labour market and enhance youth's familiarity with the world of work, including its practical challenges and rewards. Youth should be directly linked to business partners and they should be given hands-on experience.

Youth agripreneurship in the horticultural value‐chain: The case of small‐scale mango farmers in Southern Ghana

“…However, the factors that influence this low participation by youth in the mango value‐chain in Ghana is largely unknown. Although participation in agriculture by youth has been extensively studied, these studies have mainly focused on prospects and challenges to participation of youth in agriculture as well as the determinants of participation of youth in agricultural programs (Adesina & Favour, 2016; Afande et al, 2012; Auta et al, 2010; Cheteni, 2016; Naamwintome & Bagson, 2013) and perceptions of youth about agriculture (Njeru, 2017; Sumberg et al, 2017). To date, no study has specifically examined participation of youth in the mango value chain in Ghana.…”

Mechanisms for ensuring food security and sustainable environment through youths’ participation in agricultural education

“…Moreover, there was an outcry in a recent study by the UNICEF that youth in most developing countries of Asia and Africa not only lack access but also, the education in rural areas is often less qualitative and not relevant to rural lives (Njeru 2017). Njeru further mentioned that the curricula in most of Asian and African countries are outdated and inadequate.…”

“…The World Bank in 2014 attributed the hindrance to youth involvement in agriculture to lack of national efforts to make agriculture attractive to them (Njeru 2017). Agriculture has no doubt taken a relative deviation because of environmental resource degradation.…”

Challenges and enhancement of youth participation in agricultural education for sustainable food security

“…The advocacy on youth empowerment is because they are the most critical as agents of change in every society. Besides, most practitioners of agriculture (farmers) were mostly found in rural locations and were deprived of social infrastructures such as schools thus, posing threats to their children's academic career (Mbah et al, 2017;Njeru, 2017;Paisley, 2014). These farmers often adopt some production practices such as excessive use of chemicals for pests, weeds, and disease control; and mechanical land preparation practices, which are unfriendly to the environment (Ogboru and Anga, 2015).…”

“…The growth of a country's population comes along with it food security challenges, because environmental resources must be over tapped to meet up with needs of the population Encouraging the youth who are highly dynamic and flexible could lead to agricultural development (Njeru, 2017) and consequently food security. Being one of such developments, some authors emphasized the need to include agriculture in primary school curriculum to enable teachers to instill a positive perception in students by explaining the many aspects of agriculture; its importance in everyday life; and inherent career opportunities to the youth (Njeru et al, 2015).…”