Youth and agriculture at the youth week in Cameroon

During the 51^st Annual Youth’s Day in Cameroon, held on 11^th February 2017, the youth participated in several diverse activities. The theme for this year’s celebration was “Youth and challenges of building an exemplary, indivisible, strong and emerging nation”.

As practitioners and advocates of general sustainable development and of agriculture YPARD-Cameroon could not go without wanting to impart good knowledge to the youth- the pillars of the bright future of agriculture. 

It is with this perspective, that YPARD Cameroon in collaboration with the Cameroon Youth Initiative for Rural Development (CAMYIRD) and the WHYFARM Ambassador in Cameroon engaged with the CEF Institution on 9^th February in a half-day event. The CEF Institution is a bilingual primary and secondary school with a population of close to three hundred students; about two hundred at the primary level and one hundred at the secondary level. 

The main purpose of this event was threefold and outlined as thus; 

• Promote our new agricultural hero, AGRIMAN on his worldwide mission to sustain the youth’s interest in agriculture;
• Raise awareness of the essence of practicing agriculture and the role of the young professional s in agriculture in feeding the estimated worldwide population 9 billion by 2050;
• Inspire them to get involved in agriculture by revealing the hidden wealth in the “goldmine” of agriculture. This was done by sharing success stories of some youth in agribusiness.

In this event, we applied the idea of edutainment- a combination of education and entertainment. The outcome was awesome. The means of engaging the young ones included interactive sessions, topical discussions, quizzes on crop production and nutrition as well as video tutorials on backyard farming.

Outstanding participants of the quiz competitions from both primary and secondary school levels were awarded with crop seedlings of tomatoes, lettuce, water melons, carrots with which they were to start backyard gardens of their own. Various groups of three kids were each assigned to a mentor. The mentors were to guide the young ones to succeed at raising their crops.

As youth activists in promoting agricultural and rural development for food security within local communities, the nation and on the international level we continuously seek to inspire the interest of the youth to participate in agriculture. We believe by this; more young people will come on board to increase the anticipated invaluable results that will impact the planet and contribute to attaining the concerned sustainable development goals related to this sector.

Photo credit: Marius Nguendeu