Springboard, GIZ push agribusiness skills for youth in Ondo, Osun, Ekiti

Springboard Entrepreneurship Development Initiative and Germany’s GIZ are equipping youths in Ondo and Osun states with agribusiness skills to tap emerging opportunities across the sector.

Hundreds of participants from Ondo, Osun and Ekiti converged in Akure on Monday for a conference organised by Springboard with support from GIZ. The summit focused on moving young people beyond subsistence farming into roles in processing, logistics and agtech.

“The future farmer may not necessarily carry a hoe,” said Lawrence Afere, Springboard’s co-founder and chief executive, urging youths to acquire digital and managerial skills for the sector.

According to him, agribusiness provides opportunities for underemployed young people, especially in rural areas, giving them the chance to establish innovative agricultural enterprises and improve their agribusiness skills.

After said, young people need to plan ahead and take advantage of the prospects and the opportunities in the agriculture sector.

“These young people, after the conference today, will receive a month of practical training in several value chains: cocoa, fishery, piggery and poultry. We will also link them up with existing practitioners so that they can be mentored and see the practical ways of running successful agribusinesses.

“Also, they will participate in the online courses of the Agribusiness e-Academy under the Agri-Business Facility for Africa (ABF) project. After the training, we will provide further support for them to start their agribusinesses. For example, they will each reach kickstart, such as chicks, piglets, seeds and fingerlings.

“The idea is that beyond theory and practical training, we want them to actually start these agribusinesses, and Springboard will continue to partner with them. This year, we also have the support of ABF and GIZ partnering with us on the cocoa value chain. They are helping to bring more young people to work with existing farmers to develop the cocoa value chain.

“Today, the conference hosts about 300 youths for this year’s Youth in Agribusiness Conference from Ondo state and neighbouring states.

“Agriculture has gone beyond cutlasses and hoes. Agriculture is now about technology. You don’t have to be in the field to be a farmer. You can be in the office and still be a farmer. You can work in logistics, agri-banking, value addition, and you can also be a producer. These are opportunities that we will open up to these young people. It’s beyond cutlasses and hoes. That’s not all agriculture is. Logistics is there, value addition is there, even banking is there. There are many opportunities that all our speakers today have opened up to.

“The federal government is doing a lot in the agricultural value chains; the state governments are also doing a lot. We are just complementing and supporting them to also see more results in what they are already doing.

“So our message to them is that they should not give up. Currently, Nigeria has about 220 million people. By 2050, we will be about 450 million people. Who is going to feed us? Will our food be imported or will the food be grown locally? That’s the question. Those are the data we have to look at. To feed that growing population, our young people today must begin to consider and take the lead in the agri-space. And that’s our message to the government,” he said.

Christian Koduah, regional adviser on the Agribusiness Facility for Africa (ABF) from GIZ, a German Development Corporation, said, “Agriculture is a business that we can’t do like how our grandfathers did it some years back. It’s a business that we must take very seriously. So whatever any of our youths are interested in doing, we should look at it from a business perspective.”

Folorunso Olayode, the Provost of the Federal College of Agriculture, Akure (FECA), while speaking at the conference, advised the youths to calm down, learn, and get a lot of knowledge and information which they can go ahead to adopt in their various fields, especially on the farms.

Olayode, who was represented by Kayode Sule, said the event “is an annual conference of Springboard Nigeria and they partner with so many international organisations to bring about job creation, food security, by getting involved in agriculture, especially among youth and the vulnerable categories of people in our society.

“Their focus is mainly on youth employment through agriculture, which they have been doing over the years, and we are happy to have them again in 2026 in order to empower our youth and ensure that much more people are taken out of the unemployment market into doing something gainful and beneficial for themselves.

“There are quite a number of aspects of agriculture that we will be looking at here, like poultry production, like pig production, cassava, cocoa and several others. I want them to really sit down, learn the basics about all these aspects of agriculture, take the one that they have an interest in and take it with all seriousness.

“Our youth should go ahead and set up something that can really bring meaningful impact in their life and their families. Springboard is also bringing empowerment, especially in conjunction with this international organisation like GIZ.

“So, I would really encourage the young people who are available here and all the other participants to take it seriously, learn all they can learn and make sure they implement whatever they have learned when they get to the field.”

Itohan Ogiemudia, the founder of Omitide Community Development Initiative, who presented a lecture titled; “Career Prospect in Agriculture,” said; “Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa with high birth rates, climate change, and inflation creating high production-demand gap, thereby putting millions into hunger and making the local food system inaccessible.”

Ogiemudia said further, “Africa has an annual population growth of 2.5 per cent while Nigeria’s is 3 per cent. Nigeria’s population is projected to surpass 400 million by 2050. In Nigeria, agricultural output growth (averaging 3.5 per cent over the past decade) barely manages to outpace the population growth, resulting in significant food deficits.

She, however, said the terrorist attacks and insecurity have displaced many farmers, this combined with climate change effects disrupts the planting and harvesting cycles.

Oluwaseun Ojo, programme manager, Next Leaders’ Initiative for Sustainability (NELIS), also said; “the most important part of it that I want the participants to get is the fact that agriculture is not just, or farming is not just an ordinary thing to do. It should be taken as a business because when we look at the way our parents in those days do agriculture the majority of them didn’t take it as a business and hence why we see that the gap, or there’s a lot of increase in the aspect of poverty that we experience today.