IYA

The Youth in Agribusiness: Enabling scaling of innovative technologies for sustainable food solutions
(YAS) project recently hosted two senior policy officers from the IGG Department (Food and Nutrition
Security), Kingdom of the Netherlands.
During their visit to the YAS office in Abuja, the senior policy officers, Jeroen Rijniers and Marion Janse,
interacted with the YAS team to understand the initiative’s progress and possible expansion areas for
sustainability.
The YAS team, led by Executive Manager Aline Mugisho, expressed appreciation to the Netherlands
government for promoting youth engagement in agriculture and ensuring that youth are empowered to
be agents of food security in Africa. She mentioned that the YAS model provides an end-to-end service
to the project participants.
She added, “The participants are equipped with technical and business skills and linked to finance and
market partners for single-digit interest credit facilities and product offtake. To facilitate this, we put
them in clusters and ensure we provide land and facilities that some of them could use as co-working
spaces through our agribusiness hub initiative.

“We look at young people as the emerging private sector in agriculture. Based on that, we do not stop at
exposing them to technology; we also help them create businesses out of technology, and IITA has many
progressive technological innovations. Therefore, if a new technology we discover could accelerate their
business, we introduce it to them, in addition to mentoring.”
The Dutch delegation was impressed with the progress of YAS in the four states and advised that the
government could adopt the YAS model to get more youths involved in agriculture.
The Dutch team, welcomed by IITA Abuja Station Head Beatrice Aighewi, noted that the Institute
remained committed to championing innovations in the agri-food sector.
The team also toured the facility at IITA station in Abuja.