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The Sub-Regional Director for West and Central Africa of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has stated that food production needs to increase fivefold to meet growing demand. Thierry Benoît, who lives in Senegal, recently spoke to Agripreneur TV. In the following interview, the IFAD regional representative talks about the vast opportunities offered by agriculture to Africa's young and growing population. "I'd like to encourage all young people in Africa to get involved in agriculture," said Mr. Benoît. In the following interview, he talks about his organization's role in food and nutrition security in Africa, among many other far-reaching issues. Read the full interview below.

CORAF You are the sub-regional director and representative of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations system. Can you tell us a little more about your activities? ?

Thierry Benoît: IFAD is a United Nations agency whose aim is to combat rural poverty, and has the particularity, in the application of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of working solely on the agricultural sector in the same way as other development banks such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank. IFAD is therefore both a specialized agency of the United Nations and an international financial institution. Today, IFAD has 177 member countries, and is active in 100 countries through some 250 ongoing projects. These country-level projects, each worth between $30 and $50 million, target the most vulnerable farmers and help them to: (i) escape poverty; (ii) improve their well-being; and (iii) modernize their agriculture so they can better meet the needs of their families.

CORAF And what about your work in Africa, specifically in Senegal? ?

Thierry Benoît: IFAD's head office is in Rome, where all the UN agencies specializing in agriculture are based. Over the past ten years, IFAD has begun a process of decentralization in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In Africa, three regional offices for West and Central Africa and three others for East and Southern Africa have been set up. For West Africa, the Dakar-based regional office is very active in Senegal and Mali, and also covers Mauritania, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde.

CORAF Agricultural entrepreneurship in Africa takes many forms. How would you define it ?

Thierry Benoît : Entrepreneurship is all about having the entrepreneurial spirit! It's the desire to design a product or service and be able to develop it yourself from A-Z. In other words, if you want to produce something, you also need to be able to transform and sell it.

You can watch the full interview in this video.

CORAF Africa today has over 200 million young people. What job creation strategies can be developed to enable the continent to harness the potential of its growing youth population? ?

Thierry Benoît : Governments really need to invest in this aspect by proposing clear strategies for youth, developing training, which is crucial. Primary, secondary and vocational school enrolment rates need to be improved, not only because they are part of the development objectives adopted by member countries (United Nations), but also to reinforce the anchoring of young people. If a young person has a good grounding in the disciplines of mathematics, French, the history of his country, and a bit of management, he has the baggage to set up a business. Conversely, if they have literacy problems, it's much more complicated from the outset.

Secondly, vocational training is very important. Young people need to go to university or college, because in reality, all it takes to train an entrepreneur is a few months of apprenticeship and theoretical training. A modern apprenticeship with a good entrepreneur can produce a very good professional in four to six months. We can therefore imagine that if this type of strategy were implemented for the millions of young people mentioned, apprenticeships would greatly accelerate the integration of young professionals into the world of work.

Setting up the entrepreneurs themselves also requires support in terms of training, access to credit and technical capacity building. Young people who are already working in the sector OR who have started their own business should be given priority support.

CORAF What opportunities are available to young people in this sector today? ?

Thierry Benoît : There are many opportunities for young people, and self-entrepreneurship will be key. IFAD has already worked on these aspects through " The potential of African agriculture ", or the partnership with FNDASP in Senegal, notably on interprofessions. Here, partnership with interprofessions is almost essential, as they have the capacity to bring together all those working in the same sector.

In the past, the various development institutions focused mainly on agricultural production and small-scale processing. Thanks to the emergence of inter-professional organizations, we can now link all players upstream and downstream in the value chain, and ensure that they can really make a profit. On this point, IFAD has tens of thousands of cases in Senegal, Mali, Cameroon and Madagascar, where such activities have been set up with farmers' organizations.

CORAF FIDA recently launched an innovative worldwide dance competition. It invites young people to get moving and make a difference. So why use dance to raise awareness of the need for greater investment in youth and rural development? ?

Thierry Benoît : This is a very recent initiative, and it's working very well. It's a mix between a subject that interests young people and one that we also use to reach out to the UN Goodwill Ambassador system. In this case, it was a choreographer and artist from Rwanda, who works in London and New York, who agreed to come and support IFAD in developing this activity. The idea was to get young people to do a dance related to agriculture and post their videos on social networks. There were thousands of contributions, and the fact that it was linked to agriculture prompted the young people to think about whether they were interested in agriculture or not? And how do young city-dwellers relate to the rural world?

CORAF Dance, afro-beat is something that attracts a lot of young people. Do you think it's a strategy that works? ?

Thierry Benoît : This strategy does indeed encourage dialogue among young people. The ultimate aim is to define the paths and directions they will choose in terms of types of farming (traditional, modern...), mechanization needs, organization, etc.

For example, in sectors such as mango, cashew nuts and pineapple, production is high, but the organization of the supply chain is problematic. This lack of organization results in major losses for products that could have been processed into juice or concentrate before they rotted, or that could have been sold on other markets (regional or export) if local markets are saturated. In both cases, intermediation would make it possible to find appropriate solutions at all levels of the value chain, by offering processed products or different marketing channels.

CORAF Speaking of processing, it requires a lot of resources, particularly the acquisition of the equipment needed for processing, and so on. Isn't this a sector that might frighten young people a little for financial reasons?

Thierry Benoît : There are technologies at all levels that can be observed in the various projects. For example, the women's groups monitored by IFAD, particularly in Kaolack, Diourbel and Kaffrine, have diversified their traditional activities to include groundnuts, millet, sesame and maize. IFAD initially supported them in processing their traditional crops using small, inexpensive machines. Secondly, once these women have learned how to crush corn, process sesame and put it into plastic bags, they are supported in marketing their produce.

At this level, the interprofession (as previously stated) enables you to move to the next level. In other words, if you produce 100-500 kilograms, but the customer is looking for 500 or 1000 tons, you need traders and other investors to be able to respond to the market.

Finally, there's the investment in "mini factories" so that we can have more substantial equipment. This requires access to credit, and links are being forged between farmers' groups and investors.

Manufacturers also need to be supported in developing new contractualization models. For example, rather than creating a 3,000-hectare plantation, the manufacturer will be encouraged to work with 3,000 farmers, each with one hectare of land, depending on its needs and expectations.

CORAF is it a bit like the innovation platforms ?

Thierry Benoît : Absolutely. Innovation platforms where partners can discuss. This concept of contract farming, in fact, enables industry and small-scale farmers to work together, agreeing on the product, wishing to have specifications that suit them. Producers and buyers can agree on the desired quality and quantity at the start of the season. In this way, the market is assured and the farmer reassured.

The processing part can be carried out in the same way, or subcontracted to another player in the value chain. The contract guarantees the farmer adequate payment for his work.

CORAF Is this what you do in rural communities? ?

Thierry Benoît : Among other things, IFAD is trying to improve the balance of the contract. Contract farming is growing all over Asia, East Africa and West Africa. It seems to be a good solution for making the transition from traditional to modern agriculture.

The FIER project in Mali has been working for five years with thousands of young people who had already set up their own businesses. The project helps them to identify the bottlenecks and the various levers and needs (training, credit, etc.) to develop their micro-businesses.

The " Agri Jeune " project, soon to be launched in Senegal, aims to achieve the same objectives by supporting young agri-preneurs.

The project is in line with the "entrepreneurial spirit" and will go beyond the aspects of simple production, making it all the more attractive to young people. What's more, the Agri Jeune project will also have a whole component on digital tools, so that there are practical communities on social networks and the use of applications specific to agriculture. We also need to go further, to ensure that contractualization between producers and market operators is based on digital platforms and applications. For example, the project identifies mango production zones, buyers and processors. The project puts them in touch with the various players, and they receive price proposals and sign a contract based on the desired quantity and quality.

CORAF We know that IFAD, as you mentioned at the outset, helps small farmers and their organizations gain better access to market-appropriate technologies. But how can young Senegalese in rural areas access your financing? ?

Thierry Benoît : That's a good question indeed. You should know that young people can't come to the IFAD regional office to ask for funding; everything goes through projects. They are in the form of loans to governments. So, the government sets up a program/project, and this program/project is implemented on the ground by several partners. These partners may be public services, NGOs, private services, private companies or farmers' organizations. This is how IFAD reaches its beneficiaries and partners.

In terms of people reached, we can cite the PADAER project, based in Tambacounda, which has reached almost 300,000 beneficiaries. The PAFA-E project, based in Kaolack and covering Louga, Diourbel and Kaffrine, has reached around 200,000 beneficiaries. Given the size of the projects, agreements are signed with partners to enable them to intervene directly at village level. Young people can therefore introduce themselves to these implementing partners.

CORAF Finally, do you have a message for Africa's youth?

Thierry Benoît : I'd really like to encourage all young people in Africa and West Africa to get involved in agriculture. Many people thought that agriculture was something outdated. But in reality, it's the main source of wealth for these countries, because as the population increases, we'll need to produce five times as much food in Africa, which will also require an enormous amount of energy. We are therefore confident that a young person wishing to set up as a farmer will have a promising future in a very buoyant sector.

I therefore encourage young people to get involved in farming, which, with the modern tools we mentioned earlier such as credit, digital technology, modernized irrigation, processing, etc., will be much more profitable than in the past.

With this in mind, I also invite young people to reconsider their rural activities. Nowadays, you can live in the village in the same way as others live in the city, with means of transport, electricity, internet, television, and all the modern services.