Crisis prevention in sub-Saharan. Africa. Agriculture: the key to the employment challenge

Prévention des crises en Afrique subsaharienne. Relever le défi de l'emploi: l'agriculture au centre

Bruno Losch (bruno.losch@cirad.fr)
Additional contact information
Bruno Losch: UMR ART-Dev - Acteurs, Ressources et Territoires dans le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In sub-Saharan Africa, 330 million young people will enter the job market over the next 15 years. That is equivalent to the current population of the United States. This influx could be a catalyst for development, provided there is growth that creates employment. Otherwise, there will be major political risks for Africa and the rest of the world. Yet African economies remain predominantly engaged in agriculture and international competition leaves little scope for rapid economic diversification. Jobs will therefore need to be created on a massive scale in agriculture and the rural sector, especially given that around 200 million of these new workers will live in rural areas. To address this challenge, as well as that of food security, there is an urgent need to establish areas of priority action aimed at reaching the largest number of people possible. This will mean focusing on family farming, supporting the development of food crops and stepping up rural diversification by strengthening the sustainability of local economies.

Keywords: EMPLOYMENT; DIVERSIFICATION ECONOMIQUE; EMPLOI; AGRICULTURE; ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; SUB SAHARAN AFRICA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-09
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00741091v2
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Perspective, 2012, N° 19, 4 p. ⟨10.18167/agritrop/00008⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-00741091v2/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00741091

DOI: 10.18167/agritrop/00008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD (hal@ccsd.cnrs.fr).