The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNNAB), will be partnering to promote youth entrepreneurship, as a means of employment generation in the agricultural sector.
The development would become achievable through the Empowering Novel Agri-Business Led Empowerment (ENABLE) of IITA with FUNNAB providing the enabling environment for it.
This was disclosed during the visit of ENABLE Team to the University recently to strategise how it can partner with FUNNAB on employment generation through agriculture.
The representative of the Director-General of ENABLE, Zoumana Bamba, said the project was aimed at engaging Nigerian youths in agriculture, noting that out of 70 million Nigerian youths, between the ages of 15 and 34, 12.8 million were unemployed (as at March, 2016), while about 15 million youths were under-employed.
Bamba added that the ENABLE youth programme entailed a collaboration between the African Development Bank (AfDB) and IITA, having about 30 African countries participating in the programme, which aimed at agribusiness creation, job creation and ensuring gender balance with five years project duration, involving graduate youths and an incubation period for the programme of between 12 and 18 months.
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