Across Africa and many parts of the world, young people represent the largest share of the population and hold significant potential to drive agrifood systems transformation, yet their meaningful participation is constrained by a “double challenge”: limited access to finance—often due to lack of land as collateral—and limited access to land—often due to insufficient financial resources to acquire, lease, or develop it. This mutually reinforcing barrier remains a major structural obstacle to inclusive rural development.

Traditional collateral-based financing models disadvantage youth, even when they have strong business ideas, technical skills, and digital know-how, making it difficult to secure loans, insurance, or start-up capital and limiting their ability to invest in inputs, technologies, value addition, or green economy opportunities. At the same time, land—central to production, identity, and long-term economic security—remains inaccessible due to high costs, complex tenure systems, gender biases, and slow formalization processes. Without finance, young farmers cannot obtain or improve land or enter contract farming arrangements that require upfront capital, locking them out of economic opportunities and long-term resilience.

This session will explore innovative pathways that break this structural deadlock. It will:

• Examine how financial institutions and development partners can shift from collateral-based lending toward emerging financing innovations such as blended finance, impact investment, cash-flow-based and character-based lending models that recognize the strengths of youth.
• look at inclusive models for youth access to land, such as public land allocation schemes, group-based land arrangements, partnership models between young farmers and landowners, and matching ageing farmers with land-seeking youth.
• A key focus will be the interconnectedness of land and finance—how innovative land access models can improve financial inclusion, and how innovative finance solutions can help youth secure or utilize land.

By sharing actionable insights and showcasing successful models, this session aims to inspire new collaborations and provide ideas to enable youth in agrifood businesses to access both land and finance. This session will contribute to a broader agenda of empowering youth, strengthening rural economies, and accelerating food systems transformation.