The American Journal of Social Science and Education Innovations
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Original Research
PAGE NO.
39-44
10.37547/tajssei/Volume07Issue02-06
OPEN ACCESS
SUBMITED
07 December 2024
ACCEPTED
09 January 2025
PUBLISHED
11 February 2025
VOLUME
Vol.07 Issue02 2025
CITATION
Fatima Umar Rahis. (2025). The effective ways for government to
engages indigenous and reduce poverty in the state. The American
Journal of Social Science and Education Innovations, 7(02), 39
–
44.
https://doi.org/10.37547/tajssei/Volume07Issue02-06
COPYRIGHT
© 2025 Original content from this work may be used under the
terms of the creative commons attributes 4.0 License.
The effective ways for
government to engages
indigenous and reduce
poverty in the state
Fatima Umar Rahis
PhD Student of City University Cambodia, Cambodia
ABSTRACT:
Rapidly rising demand for food fuelled
by population growth, urbanisation and income
growth offers enormous opportunities for
employment creation in the agri-food sector in Sub-
Saharan Africa (SSA): the sector has the potential to
be a driver of economic trans- formation. This policy
brief highlights the main results from a GIZ-
supported study of the evolving employment
dynamics in SSA’s agri
-cultural value chains by
Michigan State University. Three main pathways are
described that provide job opportunities in
agricultural value chains and in the non-farm
sectors. Further, the study summarizes key entry
points for investment and policy actions to promote
inclusive, competitive and productive agri-food
systems generating employment opportunities and
contributing
to
economic
growth
and
transformation. In order to fully capture
employment and income growth opportunities in
SSA’s agricultural value chains, investment is
required in the following five key areas: 1. Broad-
based
agricultural
productivity
growth;
2.
Information and communication technologies (ICT)
and complementary research and development
(R&D);3. Education and skill development;4.
Conditions for responsive policymaking on youth
employment issues; and5. Interventions that
reduce fertility rates and speed up the demographic
transition.
KEYWORDS:
Economic growth and transformation,
Information and communication technologies (ICT),
Education and skill development.
INTRODUCTION:
The Role of Agriculture in Rural
Employment Creation SSA has the world’s youngest
and fastest growing population. By 2050, the
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The American Journal of Social Science and Education Innovations
population is predicted to double. Hence, estimated
440 million young Africans will reach working age by
2030 (Pesche et al. 2016). Evidence suggests that
even under the most favourable projections only 25
% of the new workers will receive a chance to work
in the formal sector of the economy. This
unprecedented
demographic
trend
creates
pressure on SSA’s food production systems whic
h
are already struggling to ensure food security. In
additi-on, urbanisation and income growth are
fuelling the demand for food as well as for more
diverse and high-quality agricultural products such
as meat, milk and horticulture. However, due to
prevaili
ng low productivity levels, SSA’s agriculture
has not kept pace with population dynamics. This
had lead to an increased reliance on food imports
whileat the same time intra-African agricultural
trade has increased as well, but still at a marginally
low level (Figure 1). These developments are also
recognised by the G20 intheir work stream on youth
employment (World Bank Group and IFAD
2017).Rural areas represent a space of opportunity,
in which many rural youth can find a pros-pect to
build their livelihoods (Fox et al. 2020).
Further,agriculture still is the most important
employment sector in most SSA countries and
crucial in determining the rate of employment
growth in the farming, off-farm, and non-farm
sector (Yeboah and Jayne 2018a). This offers new
opportunities for jobs, particularly in the linked
segments of the agri-food value chains. Mainly, this
concerns the delivery of improved seed, fertiliser
and machinery to support local food production. In
addition, post-harvest handling, marketing, trade
and processing are profiting from agricultural
growth. Therefore, improving the productivity and
capa-city of SSA food production systems to
respond to growing food demand could accelerate
job creation
and economic
growth.
SSA
policymakers and their development partners
recognise these challenges and opportunities. The
question, however, is which strategy will harness
agriculture’s employment, and put income
potentials into effect. What makes this difficult is
the lack of data and empirical evidence on labour
market dynamics in the region. A set ofemployment
indicators are required which reflect the continent’s
socioeconomic and cultural conditions. In addition,
policymakers face the challenge of anticipating and
responding to key “megatrends”
-such as rising land
scarcity, the decline of inheritance as a means by
which young Africans can enter farming, the
problems associated with land degradation, global
competition in agricultural value chains, and climate
change.
This policy brief hints to key entry points for
investment and policy actions to promote inclusive,
competitive and productive agri-food systems to
generate employment opportunities and contribute
to economic growth and transformation. Pathways
for Job Creation and Economic Transformation No
single economic sector has the potential to create
employment opportunities to all (young) Africans
entering the labour market, and therefore different
structural trans-formation pathways are required.
SSA’s economic performance over the past decades
has opened up opportunities for well-educated and
skilled individuals by shifting employment from
farming to productive and remunerative non-farm
sectors.
Further-more,
the
on-going
transformational changes in the demand for food
and agricultural products has created new
incentives
for
investment
in
agriculture,
transforming parts of the labour force into
successful farmers. This is especially the case among
a relatively entrepreneurial class of individuals, who
have access to productive resources (e.g. land,
finance, technologies and markets). However, a
large segment of the labour force re-mains
consigned to “poverty jobs”. Therefore, SSA’s long
-
term economic transformation and prosperity will
depend on how well policies support the transit of
the “struggling” labour
force participants into
productive and well-payed jobs both inside and
outside of farming. This entails three main pathways
(as illustrated in Figure 2).
To foster these pathways, small and medium-sized
enterprises in the midstream value chains are
parti
cularly important, constituting a “Quiet
Revolution” in the “Hidden Middle”. Wholesale,
logistics and processing create markets for SSA
farmers today and will continue to play a key role in
the next decades. Therefore, governments and
donors should also stimulate private investment in
that “Hidden Middle” of the supply chains (AGRA
2019). Evidence from nine cross-country data sets1
indicate strategic investment in five key areas to
fully deploy employment and income growth
opportunities in SSA’s agricul
-tural value chains:
1. Promote broad-based Agricultural Productivity
Growth Historical experiences of industrialised
nations and evidence from low income economies
suggest that agricultural productivity growth
remains critical to increase incomes and stimulate
off-farm job creation. Since a large proportion of the
workforce in most SSA countries will remain
engaged in agriculture, the performance of agri-
culture is continued to play a decisive role in
influencing employment op- portunities, rural
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The American Journal of Social Science and Education Innovations
development and poverty alleviation. Therefore,
public investment in support of agricultural
productivity growth will remain a crucial
component of an effective youth employment
strategy. Such strategies need to be designed to
allow (young) smallholder farmers to participate in
and contribute to the economic transition to assure
broad-based and inclusive agricultural growth with
greater multiplier effects on the rest of the
economy. Investment that generates the greatest
impact on agricultu-ral productivity growth are:
■
Policies which reduce costs of private sector
investment and promote competition, as well as
agricultural service delivery and extension systems
that facilitate farmers
’
access to productivity-
enhancing technologies.
■
Agricultural research and development (R&D)
facilitating access to innovative and affordable
technologies;
■
Physical infrastructure (rural electrification, road,
railways and port infrastructure); Specific public
actions to support smallholder
’
s inclusion in
agricultural development processes may vary across
countries but should at the minimum address:
■
Risks and vulnerabilities through improved and
environmentally-friendly farming systems, secured
land rights, and agricultural insurance;
■
Enhancing their capacity to expand production
and take advantage of economies of scale; and
■
Strengthen their access to and bargaining power
in the market through farmers
’
organisations. 1
http://surveys.worldbank.org/lsms/programs/integ
rated-surveys-agriculture-ISA
2. Invest in ICT and Complementary Agricultural
R&DImproving
access
to
information
and
knowledge contributes significantly to in-crease
labour productivity in the entire agricultural value
chain.
Information
and
com-munication
technologies (ICT) play a crucial role in this process.
But the contribution of ICT’s conveying information
depends on the quality of the content. Therefore,
one important pillar of ICT’s ability to improve
agricultural productivity is
–
amongst other aspects
like accessibility
–
the information being conveyed.
Another key issue is to deliver specific knowledge
concerning
re-search
findings,
market
opportunities, and business development to target
groups and to enable them to apply appropriately.
As ICT’s increasingly overcome barriers to remote
areas, a binding constraint on the impact of ICTs is
chronic low funding of adaptive agricultural
research and development (R&D), which has been
shown to provide among the greatest impact on
agricultural productivity and food security per dollar
invested. Asian farmers benefit from the fact that
their governments on average spend over eight
times more annually on agricultural R&D than
African governments (see ASTI online data).
3. Invest in Education and Skills DevelopmentAbout
two-thirds of young Africans entering the labour
market do not have a secondary school education.
20 percent of youth (15-24 years) and 30 percent of
young adults (25-34 years) have no formal
education at all (Filmer and Fox 2014). Young girls,
ethnic minorities, and rural residents are unduly
affected. Additionally, the quality of educati-on
concerns. Learning assessments indicate that the
educational systems in SSA do not adequately equip
students with cognitive (literacy, numeracy),
technical, and “soft” skills (e.g. critical thinking,
communication, leadership, and solving problems).
These skills are necessary for productive
employment in a modern economy. Across SSA, less
than a third of those completing primary school
achieve basic standard competencies in literacy and
numeracy (Bold et al., 2017). Education and skill
development to equip young people with
foundational, entrepre-neurial and industry specific
skills for productive employment demands a life
cycle approach. It requires long term investment on
multiple fronts including:
■
Early childhood nutrition programmes, especially
during the first thousand days of life, to avert
stunting and its negative effects on learning
abilities;
■
Public investment to expand quality educational
and skill development opportunities at all levels;
and
■
Promoting greater public and private participation
designing curricula to address skills mismatches. In
addition to long term investment, Technical,
Vocational, Education and Training (TVET) offers
short and mid-term gains in employment. It opens
access to quality agricultural and agri-food skills
enhancing the chances of young people for higher
wages. Also, opportunities for self-employment are
able to grow. Any effort to improve educational
access and quality must also pay special attention to
barriers faced by girls and young women. Without
carefully targeted interventions, girls and young
women will continue to lag behind their male
counterparts.
4. Create Conditions for Responsive Policymaking
on Youth Employment Issues Young people are
confronted with the fact that transformational
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processes shift rapidly and differ across SSA’s
countries. This affects employment as the required
skills in agriculture and non-farm sectors might be
changing dynamically. Successful employ-ment
programming, therefore, will respond adequately
on the changing needs of young people. It requires
investment in areas such as labour market trends,
conditions of work,and examples of proven
strategies which address vulnerabilities in the
workforce and agricultural value chains. However,
this is presently lacking in most SSA countries and it
is undermining the effectiveness of youth
employment
interventions.
Therefore,
strengthening local research systems to improve
data collection, dissemination of infor-mation and
public discussion with youth representatives are
crucial. Youth employment-related institutions do
not only have to work for young people but also to
work with them. Young people know a lot about
their challenges and should be equipped with the
resources, skills, and opportunities to participate in
political dialo-gues which shape their future. 5.
Invest in Speeding up the Demographic Transition
Persistently high fertility rates in almost all SSA
countries depress private and public savings and
reduce fiscal space for investment in human capital
(education, social and behavioural skills) required
for productive employment. More young people are
crowding an already overstretched labour market.
Girls and young women deprive their own
educational and economic development by having
too early and too narrow spacing of pregnancies
–
a
poverty trap. Therefore, policies to support SSA’s
demographic tran-sition remains to be an essential
component of employment strategies particularly in
the agriculture and the rest of the economy. Well
working interventions to reduce fertility rates are:
■
The promotion of girl
’
s education;
■
Combatting early marriage;
■
Empowerment of women; and
■
Provision of youth-friendly reproductive health
information and means of contraception.
AssessmentS
SA’s
growing
economies
are
challenged to generate large employment
quantities for its rapidly growing population. In
addition to the quantitative dimension, SSA’s
economic transition must target the qualitative
dimension of employment as well. Long term
economic transformation and poverty reduction
depends on the profitability and returns to labour
associated with the jobs that will be created. Higher
incomes and wages, at least above poverty levels
(ideally “living incomes”), are required to increase
the purchasing power of workers to stimulate the
demand for off-farm goods and services and
thereby also expand employment opportunities in
the overall economy. If a large share of the
jobscreated are low-paying and rather unproductive
jobs, the resulting employment multiplier effects
will be weakened, and the economic transformation
will be stalled.
How to create more employmentv
1. Diversification of Agriculture:- More than 60 %
our workers are employed in agriculture but our
farmers are producing only limited crops. There is
need to diversify agriculture. Farmers should be
encouraged to adopt pisiculture, horticulture
animal rearing etc. along with cultivation of crop.
The government can spend some money or banks
can provide a loan, to construct wells or other
irrigation facilities to irrigate the land. A dam can be
constructed or canals can be dug to irrigate many
farms. This could lead to a lot of employment
generation within the agricultural sector itself
reducing the problem of underemployment
2. Cheap Credit:- Most of the farmers depend on
informal sources of credit. Government should
encourage the commercial banks to provide loans
to the farmers at cheaper rates.
3. Provision of basic facilities:- Our rural areas lack
basic facilities like roads, transportation, banking,
market etc. The government should invest some
money in these sectors so that Indian village can be
linked to other market. This activity can provide
productive employment to not just for farmers but
also other such as those in services like transport or
trade.
4. Promotion of local industries:- Promote and
locate industries especially the cottage and small
scale industries in semi rural areas where a large
number of people may be employed.
5. Improvement in Education & Health:- Most of the
Indian villages lack education and health facilities. A
study conducted by the planning commission
estimates that nearly 20 lakh job can be created in
education sector alone. Similarly. We need many
more doctors, nurses, health workers in rural areas.
6. Tourism or regional craft industry, or new services
like IT require proper planning and support from the
government. Study by the Planning Commission say
that if tourism as a sector is improved, every year
we can give additional Read more at:
https://edurev.in/question/1078255/How-to-
create-more-employment-
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The American Journal of Social Science and Education Innovations
7 Governments can reduce poverty in a number of
ways, including:
Economic growth
Governments can stimulate economic growth to
increase incomes and create jobs. Studies show that
a 10% increase in a country's average income can
reduce poverty by as much as 20-30%.
8 Education
Education can help break the cycle of poverty. It can
help people develop skills and correct disparities
due to marginalization.
9 Basic needs
Governments can prioritize the basic needs of the
poor in national development policies. These needs
include access to clean water, sanitation, and basic
health care.
10 Microfinance
Governments can promote microfinance programs
to support entrepreneurship and small businesses.
11 Affirmative actions
Governments can implement affirmative actions,
such as targeted cash transfers, to ensure that the
benefits of poverty reduction initiatives reach those
who might otherwise be excluded.
12 Macroeconomic reforms
Governments can implement macroeconomic
reforms, such as fiscal, trade, and exchange rate
policy, to diversify the economy and create jobs.
CONCLUSION
Developing the agri-food sector is an im-portant
pathway to economic transformation and job
creation for SSA’s youth. Future ag
-ri-food chains
need to build pathways from “struggling farms” to
“successful farming”. In order to fully capture the
existing employ-ment and income growth
opportunities inagri-food chains, comprehensive
invest-ment and policy actions in five areas are
indispensable: broad-based agricultural pro-
ductivity growth, information and communi-cation
technologies (ICT) and complementary research and
development
(R&D),
education
and
skill
development, active policymaking on youth
employment issues, and reduction of fertility rates.
However, the agricultural sector will only be able to
absorb a proportionof the young rural population.
Agricultural programmes can broaden the pathway
from struggling to successful farming for an esti-
mate 20% in agricultural value chains. But above
this, it is essential to promote pathways of
struggling farm youth to success-fully enter non-
farm labour markets by improving their capacities.
Investments in thefive outlined areas will broaden
the labour absorption capacity of agri-food chains,
as well as the rural non-farm economy.
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