Enjoy!
Youth, Skills and Work: Why we need contextualized education
By Grace Mwaura
Introduction
At a conference on young people, farming and food in Africa,
I was glad to discuss with leading researchers and practitioners in the
field of young people and agriculture in Africa, the subject of
education and training as a priority for the agrifood-youth nexus.
Thinking of Youth, Skills and Work, I have no better words to explain
why I stress contextualized education and training, than to refer to my conversations and paper[i] at the conference and a recently published blog by the New Agriculturalist and few blogs i have previously written.
For the purpose of this blog, I will however focus on the overall workforce in Africa: demographic dividend[ii]
and not only the agrifood sector. I challenge the emerging notion that
agrifood sector in Africa presents major opportunities to solve the
pre-conceived and framed youth challenge of unemployment. Indeed, as I
will show through education and training, the biggest challenge is in
the structures of preparing the workforce for whatever
socio-economic sector.
