Blog – De-risking Agrifood systems for Young People: Co-Creation and Decent Work

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On 10 September 2026, the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development (GDPRD)’s Thematic Working Group on Rural Youth Employment (TWG RYE) hosted the webinar De-risking Agrifood systems for Young People: Co-Creation and Decent Work. Representatives from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), AKADEMIYA2063, the World Bank Group and the European Commission’s Global Youth Sounding Board explored how to reduce the risks young people face in the agrifood sector, strengthen decent employment and participation, and position youth as main agents of transformation.

TWG RYE Co-Chairs Leonard Mizzi and Genna Tesdall opened the discussion by emphasizing that de-risking should not be understood solely as reducing risks for investors and financial institutions, but also as mitigating the risks faced by young people when they enter employment in agrifood systems. Youth should be the agents of change rather than merely beneficiaries, with a meaningful role in shaping agrifood policies.

Juan Carlos Mendoza, Director of IFAD’s Environment, Climate, Gender and Social Inclusion Division, outlined how targeted investments can reduce risks for young people while promoting decent work and entrepreneurship across agrifood systems. Drawing on IFAD’s Agribusiness Hub Programme, he emphasized that training alone is insufficient; young people need market access, financial support, and partnership opportunities with government and the private-sector actors.

He noted that agrifood systems must offer genuinely attractive work and livelihoods to young people and should not be seen solely as a matter of agricultural production. The real opportunity spans the entire value chain, from production and processing to storage, transport and marketing.

He also pointed to a mismatch between young people’s struggle to find decent jobs and employers’ difficulties in finding appropriate workers with the right skills set. To reduce the risks and build sustainable livelihoods in agrifood systems, he called for policies to be co-created with young people.

Marwan Benali, Social Policy Officer in FAO’s Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division, presented recent evidence on youth employment and risks across agrifood systems, drawing on FAO’s 2025 Status of Youth in Agrifood Systems report. He highlighted the importance of agrifood systems for youth employment, with 44 per cent of working youth globally employed in agrifood systems, rising to 82 per cent in countries facing protracted crises.

He identified three priorities: increasing economic opportunities across agrifood systems; strengthening youth capabilities and access to resources; and combining employment with resilience to shocks in fragile and crisis settings. He closed with a call to action: the global community must inquire more, include more, and invest more in youth-inclusive agrifood systems.

Elisenda Estruch Puertas, Economist and Rural Economy Specialist in ILO’s Sectoral Policies Branch, called for a shift in focus. When discussing the future of youth in agri-food systems, decent work needs to be a foundation of the transformation we envisage. It goes beyond job creation: it means productive employment and fair incomes, rights at work, social protection, safe and healthy working conditions, and voice and representation through social dialogue.

Based on the ILO Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026, she noted that youth employment is at a crossroads, with growing concerns about the quality of youth employment. One in five young people globally are not in employment, education or training (NEET), and that 58 per cent of employed youth work informally. Agri-food systems remain a key sector for employment for many youth, especially in developing countries.

She called for integrated approaches that address both labour demand and supply together, combining skills development, apprenticeships and employment services, social protection, rights at work and social dialogue. The ILO Policy Guidelines for the Promotion of Decent Work in the Agri-food Sector provide key guidance for setting policies that enable young people to seize decent job opportunities across agri-food systems. Human-centred innovation can also open new possibilities. As a practical example, she introduced MAIA, an AI-based tool being used in Latin America that illustrates how digital tools can be harnessed to enhance productivity and decent work.

Aisha Musaazi S. Nakitto, Head of the Policy Innovation Unit and Program Lead, Malabo Montpellier Panel, AKADEMIYA2063, delivered a clear message: young people in Africa should not be expected to shoulder risks that the agrifood systems themselves have yet to resolve.

Noting that only about a third of youth in sub-Saharan Africa engage with formal banking services, she argued that policy responses should shift from expanding access to credit towards de-risking finance itself. Governments and development partners can offer partial credit guarantees, matching grants, flexible collateral requirements, and blended finance, specifically targeting youth-led agrifood SMEs. She also called for skills training to be bundled and paired with entrepreneurship, finance, mentorship and technology opportunities. She further argued that access to productive assets should take precedence over upfront ownership to lower entry barriers for young people.

Pointing to Uganda’s Youth Livelihood Programme and Zambia’s Skills Development Fund as examples, she stressed the importance of institutionalizing youth participation in formal policy-making processes, including moving from young people’s voices as consultants to becoming decision-makers.

Abou Ba, Agricultural Engineer; Member of the Global Youth Sounding Board of the European Commission (DG INTPA) and Youth Sounding Board of the European Union Delegation to Senegal, drew on his experience with the EU roadmap for engagement with civil society in Senegal to illustrate what meaningful youth participation looks like in practice. He drew a line between consultation and genuine co-creation: young people must be directly involved in shaping decisions, and youth-participation mechanisms need formal institutional recognition and sufficient authority to survive changes in leadership.

He described how young people contributed to the European Union roadmap in Senegal – taking part in the mapping mission, field information collection, report drafting, and the steering committee. Using the Youth Friendly Standard, an evaluation tool across six pillars, he argued that: youth inclusion should not be assessed merely by headcount, but by actual access to resources, decision-making power, contracts, procurement opportunities, and calls for proposals.

Izabela Leao, Senior Agribusiness Specialist at the World Bank Group, argued “young people do not need to be convinced that agrifood systems matter and work, but what they need are those opportunities to be real and the risks to be manageable.” To connect young people to skills, finance, technology, and business relationships, she stressed that interventions should start by identifying where demand is growing, who the buyers are, and which services are missing, and not with training alone. She pointed to AgriConnect, a World Bank Group initiative that aims to support 300 million smallholder farmers while creating more and better jobs, as an example of this demand-driven approach.

Examples from Lebanon and Morocco showed how interventions must respond to different country contexts, from protecting livelihoods and restoring essential services, including rural infrastructure, to modernizing established agri-value chains. Across both cases, she reinforced that skills, finance, infrastructure and market connections must move together, not through isolated interventions.

The discussion made one thing clear: de-risking agrifood systems for young people takes more than a single intervention.  “Youth” are not a homogeneous group, and interventions must reflect the different geographical circumstances, aspirations and opportunities of young people across rural, peri-urban, and urban contexts. There needs to be a typology specific zooming of the challenges and possible solutions and pathways.

Skills, finance, technology, and market access need to work in tandem to create decent, resilient, and sustainable job opportunities. Speakers reiterated a common principle: policies and programmes should be designed with young people, not just for them. As Genna Tesdall noted in closing, the next step is to “take the pen” together with young people.

The path forward is not simply increasing youth participation in agrifood systems, but also ensuring young people hold real access to resources, opportunities and decision-making power, so they can shape their own pathways to sustainable and decent work.

More will follow in the coming months and we welcome ideas on how to take this subject matter at a more granular level.