The much-anticipated Ghana Youth Agriculture Summit’s second edition comes off tomorrow at the Kumaplay auditorium, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
This year’s summit will be on the theme ‘Agriculture for Economic Transformation and Sustainable Development with focus on the youth, women and climate’.
The annual summit is seeking to mobilise five million youth across the country within the next five years, who will be imbued with knowledge on agriculture entrepreneurship.
The summit will further help participants build economically viable ventures in agriculture and its value chain.
Participants will also be expected to embark on climate adaptation and mitigation actions which eventually earn them income.
A section of participants at the maiden edition last year, Convener for the summit, Evans Kyere-Mensah, has called on the youth – especially women – to take advantage of the event and become enlightened on the potentials and opportunities; including the knowledge that will be imparted by speakers.
These opportunities, he believes, will give the youth economic empowerment and also help transition them to end poverty by breaking the unemployment cycle, and also contribute to the country’s development agenda.
Mr. Kyere-Mensah explained that the vision is being enabled to reduce poverty, reduce unemployment, create wealth – and at the same time ensure sustainable livelihoods for young people as well as nurture dignity and self-confidence in them.
Several speakers from academia and industry have been put on the bill and will be addressing different topics to ensure participants are empowered enough to be self-sustaining agricultural entrepreneurs.
Speakers include: Deputy Minister for Finance, Dr. John Ampontuah Kumah; Chief Executive Officer-Business and Financial Times (B&FT), Dr. Godwin Acquaye; Chief Executive Officer-National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), Kofi Ofosu Nkansah; and Executive Director-Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Ben Boakye.
The rest are Matilda Owusu-Bio of CARISCA KNUST; Business Lawyer, Richard Nunukpeku Esq; Doris Ahiati, Executive Coach and Farmer; Sepencia Darko, Founder-Farmer Tribe; Ellison Owusu-Fordjuor, Principal-College of Tropical Agriculture; and Bright Evans Darko, Head SMEs-Ghana EXIMBANK, among others.