Govt to use agriculture sector to solve youth employment
The governemnt has decided to use the agricultural sector to solve challlenges over youth employment since agriculture is always considered as optional after normal employnmet become hard to come by.
This was expressed by Deputy Minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office (Labour, Youth and Employment Anthony Mavunde when handing over passports to 12 youth, members of Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) cooperative wing the Graduate Entrepreneurs Cooperative (SUGECO) – who had received sponsorship for practical training in agriculture in the United States.
Mavunde said his ministry is always close to SUA by cooperating with it in solving unemployment challenges for youths in the agricultural sector adding that as of now the government plan is to ensure 40 percent of 24.3 get employment in the agricultural sector.
He said government’s goals is to ensure that by 2025 40 percent of the country’s labour force is employed in the agro-industry related with farming, livestock keeping, and forestry as this will push up demand for raw materials from these subsectors.
He also said Morogoro is among the regions that has been doing well in agriculture by allocating land areas for farming activities whereas some youths who graduated at SUA are provided with land for rice farming and already they have earned more than 100m/-. He added that the government is in talks with the region’s government to increase land area for them.
He also advised financial institutions to ease loan conditions for youths and praised Equity Bank for enabling the 12 youths get loans for air tickets to the US.
Director of SUGECO Revocatus Kimaro said the 12 youths will travel to the US to do practical studies in agriculture, and are part of 16 youths for this year’s intake as four are already in the US.
He said the programme started in2018, and for 2018-19 75 youths received similar sponsorship and by January this year a total of 876 youths received similar sponsorship
