About-EYC
ENABLE Youth Cameroon is a development initiative that focuses on the promotion of youth entrepreneurship in agribusiness, within the framework of the Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (AVC_DP). ENABLE Youth Cameroon was approved as a Component of a larger non-concessionary loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to the Cameroon Government. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER) is the contracting authority of the Agricultural Value Chain Development Project, whose 3rd component exclusively focused on youth entrepreneurship in agriculture and related sectors is called “ENABLE – Youth Cameroon”.
The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) applies its youth agribusiness strategy within ENABLE Youth Cameroon, 3rd component of the Agricultural Value Chain Development Project. As of 17 May 2018, IITA initially agreed to lead and administer Youth Agribusiness Incubation Centers (YABICs) over 45 months, following its Youth Agripreneur guidelines (IYA).
OUR MISSION
To address the issue of youth unemployment and underemployment, the mission of ENABLE Youth Cameroon is to: Innovate, create wealth and decent jobs for youth by youth along the agricultural value chains in Cameroon
In Cameroon, as everywhere else in Africa, the youth constitute the largest population segment, which is a great asset for the economic growth of the country. However, due to underemployment and unemployment, they find little means to meet their expectations for a better life. To that, we can add the strong stereotypes linked to some domains like agriculture, wrongly considered as “poor” by the youth, who are focused on white collar jobs.
Yet, agriculture contributes more than a quarter of the GDP of the economy of Cameroon, which is an agricultural power in Central Africa.
Some of the major causes of youth unemployment and underemployment are the gap between graduate skill sets and those sought by employers, as well as youth with strong technical and innovation skills lacking the necessary business acumen to become self-employed.
By Innovating, creating wealth and decent jobs for youth along the agricultural value chains in Cameroon we believe we can address the above issues.
OUR TARGET
ENABLE Youth Cameroon is opened to all young Cameroonians, regardless of their region, origin or residence. However, it is worth mentioning that the main target recruited and trained by the program is exclusively made up of young Cameroonian, men and women, aged between 18 and 35, with a minimum university level of BACC + 2/GCE Level + 2, regardless of their academic field of study.
OUR OBJECTIVES
To achieve our mission, we are to:
- Expand the opportunities in agriculture and agribusiness to the young Cameroonian, females and males
- Select some institutions and renovate them to host the 14 incubation Centers of ENABLE Youth Cameroon
- Recruit and train 512 agripreneurs interns per year, with at least 40% females agripreneurs
- Create at least 600 agribusinesses
Where We Work
ENABLE Youth Cameroon is implemented in the 5 intervention regions of AVC_DP, which are the Center, East, Littoral, South and South-West. The different locations in each region are as follows:
WOMEN IN AGRIBUSINESS
The strategy used by ENABLE Youth Cameroon is a youth in agribusiness model which addresses the issue of widespread youth unemployment and provides a platform that propels both young women and men toward self-employment in agriculture.
In fact, if youth is facing barriers to accessing opportunities in Cameroon, young women are facing greater challenges. Despite their important role in the agricultural sector and even with their gains in education and skills over the past decades, women still earn less than men, work at lowest levels and face constraints which affect their productivity.
