Youth, Skills and Work: Why we need contextualized education

This post comes from Grace Mwaura, a student at Oxford University who previously worked for the Healthy Learning Programme. Grace shares her insights on Youth Skills and Work: Why we need contextualized education.
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.

Read on here