b'asked & answered INSPIRING INNOVATIONAgriculture Can Bea Job for the Future:Heifers Senior VP of Africa Programs on Youth, Technology and the Fate of FarmingInterview by Pierre Ferrari, Heifer International president and CEOA diverse and vast continent with a people to match, Africas booming youth population has fueled a youth bulge, with children and young adults forming a large proportion of African countries citizens. With this challenge comes opportunity, said Adesuwa Ifedi, Heifer Internationals senior vice president of Africa programs, who believes tapping the potentialof young people and the agriculture sector can inspire transformationand solutionsthroughout the region.The first step is removing the barriers young people face in building productive, profitable livelihoods in agriculture, especially with interventions that encourage youth innovation and job creation. Heifer International CEO Pierre Ferrari sat down with Ifedi to discuss the organizations efforts to drive positive change through agriculture in Africa, particularly the 2021 launch of the AYuTe Africa Challenge, an annual competition that awards business support to young African innovators using technology to reimagine farming and food production across the continent.PIERRE FERRARI: What doespeople are below the age of 25.continent and the rate at which Africas large youth populationThere is an estimation that byour population is [growing]. mean for the continent? 2050 well have about 830 millionOur innovative thinking is young people in our continent.[centered] around job creation in ADESUWA IFEDI: We are lookingWe know that we are currentlysectors where these youth could at a continent that has about 1.2not able to provide enough jobsbe absorbed, [because] over 420 billion people, and 60% of thesefor the young people in ourmillion of these young people are 16| SPRING 2022'