ENABLE YOUTH CAMEROON AND THE HOST INSTITUTIONS OF YABICS SET THE PATH TO A WIN-WIN PARTNERSHIP

In a few days, the ENABLE Youth Program will start with the training of its first batch of agripreneur interns in Youth Agribusiness Incubation Centers (YABICs) across Cameroon, following the Youth Agripreneurs model of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The 14 YABICs disseminated across 5 regions of Cameroon are hosted by public and private-owned institutions, whose representatives were invited for an exchange meeting at the IITA station in Cameroon on Friday, February 15, 2019. The aim of the meeting was to get a common understanding of the IITA approach, to share the vision of the Enable Youth program in Cameroon (EYC) and to agree on the collaboration agreement between ENABLE Youth Cameroon and the host institutions. Forty-six participants from IITA-EYC, the Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (AVC_DP) and host institutions of YABICs attended the one-day workshop.

Indeed, Dr. Cargele Masso, Coordinator of ENABLE Youth Cameroon, shared the vision of the model of the IITA Youth Agripreneur (IYA), to ensure the participants to the meeting understand it very well, when adapted to the Cameroonian context. Answers to the different questions raised by the participants were also provided. In general, the questions focused on the sustainability of the YABICs after the project lifespan, the capacity building of trainers to ensure the consistency of the IYA model in the different YABICs, and the follow up of agripreneurs after the incubation period.
After the first articulation of the day, IITA, AVC_DP and the host institutions also identified the contribution and institutional support of host institutions in the training program. Importantly, they agreed on the communication framework between the key stakeholders of the Project and clarified the pending issues related to the collaboration agreement.
At the end of each point, the participants to the exchange meeting made some recommendations based on the discussions. Among those recommendations, they insisted on the inclusion of civic education in the training program, with the aim of revamping the spirit of civil responsibility of youth towards their country, and in the development of Africa.

In Cameroon, 16 hosts institutions have been selected to host the 14 YABICs where 1,536 agripreneur interns of EYC will be trained in 3 years, at a rate of 512 interns per year. The 14 YABICs are currently in 4 regions, namely Center (4), East (2), Littoral (5), and South (3), with possibility of additional YABICs in South West during the AVC-DP lifespan. For 2019, 44% of the 512 agripreneur interns are females. EYC will strengthen the ability to create wealth and decent jobs in agribusiness, following the the IYA model.