FEATURE | COVER STORY
A worker at a Kenyan coffee factory.
procedures for renting agricultural lands at preferential prices,” Jomaa said.
The knowledge economy Others say the road to fashioning economies that can properly support the needs of Africa’s young workers lies in knowledge-based service industries.
Manufacturing occupies a disproportionately small part of the continent’s economies at present, in total making up less than 10% of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP in 2012. No single African country saw a manufactured product make it into the list of top-three exported goods last year. But it is the most traditional industry of all, agriculture, that is particularly popular as a potential solution to youth unemployment at present. The African Union declared 2014 the year of agriculture in a bid to stress the industry’s potential for sustainable development. “New empirical evidence suggests that the rural poor are more likely to exit poverty by increasing their productivity in agriculture,” says Luc Christiaensen, senior economist at the World Bank. Agriculture offers the opportunity for some African countries to develop comparative advantages. But this requires large scale private investment, something that is currently being seen only in Mozambique and Zambia.
At the FAO Regional Conference for Africa last month, Tunisian Prime Minister Medhi Jomaa took the opportunity to push for
Jon Gosier heads Apps4Africa, an organization that started out providing seed funding for African entrepreneurs and now supports local businesses by providing advice and business development as well as financing.
“Our thesis is that when you look globally at where jobs are coming from, overwhelmingly it’s in knowledge economies: technology, media, data.” Jon Gosier heads Apps4Africa
more private investment in agriculture and linked the policy to benefits for the continent’s youth.
“Tunisia urges young promoters to invest in the agricultural sector by granting them property loans as well as facilitating the
“Our thesis is that when you look globally at where jobs are coming from, overwhelmingly it’s in knowledge economies: technology, media, data,” he tells The Africapitalist.
Gosier argues that in Africa there’s actually too much emphasis on traditional industry, which he says has been shown to be an unstable source of employment for young people. His organization is investing in young people who have ideas in the technology, or data industries. One example is Su Kahumbu’s Kenya-based venture iCow, a phone application available in both English and Kiswahili that combines the technology and agricultural industries.
The app helps dairy farmers to increase their yields by giving them best practice tips and theafricapitalist | 27