By Jeremiah Rogito and Mwandwe Chileshe
Africa-Press – Uganda. Just after sunrise—long before offices open or policy meetings begin—you will find young Africans already at work in the fields, markets, workshops and improvised tech hubs that keep our food systems alive. Different countries, different landscapes, but the same pulse: a generation taking charge, engineering the future they want to inherit.
This is the real Africa that shaped the unified youth agenda heading into COP30. Not the theoretical or statistical Africa often discussed in meeting rooms, but a living, breathing continent where young people are already piecing together the resilience that governments and financiers continue to negotiate.
Our message in Belém is simple and urgent: African youth must move from the margins to the center of food and climate finance. The stakes could not be higher. By 2050, more than 600 million Africans will join the working-age population, and one in three people aged 15 to 34 worldwide will be African. That demographic wave will determine whether our food systems create dignity and jobs or fuel frustration and migration. Leaders and financiers gathering at COP30 have a chance to back proven youth-led models with real money and measurable commitments.
Across 2025, young innovators from the continent came together through the Youth Entrepreneurship for the Future of Food and Agriculture (YEFFA) convenings in Botswana, Rwanda and The Gambia. They shared stories of ingenuity and strain, confronting climate shocks with improvisation, building businesses in fragmented markets, and carrying the emotional and financial weight of households where farming remains both essential and uncertain. From these exchanges, a collective assertion of agency emerged.
This agency forms the backbone of the Unified Youth Statement on Advancing Climate-Resilient Food Systems in Africa, a declaration shaped by lived realities and infused with the urgency of a generation that cannot endure another decade of slow, incremental reform. The statement calls for financing models designed for young agripreneurs, representation in decision-making spaces where food and climate policies are shaped, recognition of indigenous knowledge alongside modern technologies, and value chains strong enough to withstand climate shocks. It also demands accountability mechanisms that cannot be softened by diplomatic language.
These demands reflect the day-to-day reality for young people across the continent. Youth already drive much of the global agrifood system. Forty-four percent of working young people earn their livelihoods somewhere along the chain from soils to supermarkets, yet youth food insecurity has surged since the mid-2010s. The burden is heaviest in Africa, where 21.9 percent of young people in Sub-Saharan Africa were not in employment, education or training in 2023, with young women facing the greatest barriers. This is not only a loss of talent but a warning sign for long-term stability.
Critics may argue that youth programs are cyclical, that agriculture is too risky, and that climate shocks continue to escalate. They are right about the risks, but wrong about the solutions. Risk declines dramatically when climate-smart inputs, market information, aggregation services and value chain financing operate together. That is what corridor models and last-mile service delivery are designed to achieve. When youth lead these systems, adoption rises sharply because they move quickly, understand the realities of their peers and compete on innovation.
Across the continent, young Africans are already building what global leaders say they want to see. In Zimbabwe, Tafadzwa Chikwereti uses AI and satellite data through e-Agro to provide farmers with tailored crop advice and access to credit, helping them adapt to unpredictable rainfall. In Zambia, Imungana Malikana’s solar-powered innovations at Cranitech enable farmers to track yields, irrigate efficiently and tap into climate-smart finance. In Morocco, Fatima El Khou is constructing eco-friendly value chains using solar-powered processing that reduces waste and strengthens rural incomes. These young leaders are proving what is possible when youth are trusted and equipped to lead.
Yet they operate within systems that were not designed for them. Fifty-three million young Africans remain outside employment, education or training. Young women are consistently locked out of land ownership and financial services. Too many youth-led enterprises collapse at the point where passion meets bureaucracy. Climate shocks intensify these inequities, amplifying every vulnerability young Africans already face.
COP30 presents a rare and critical opportunity to take youth leadership seriously—not as a side event, not as a symbolic gesture, but as a credible and effective pathway to achieving climate and food security goals that have stalled for years. Africa’s youth come to Belém with clarity, unity and solutions already in motion. What they need now is political will, and financing that matches the scale of their ambition.
Jeremiah Rogito is a Specialist for Soil Health, Climate and Food at the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) at AGRA. Mwandwe Chileshe is AGRA’s Lead for Advocacy and External Engagements.
Source: Nilepost News
For More News And Analysis About Uganda Follow Africa-Press
