President Akufo-Addo has opened the Presidential Conference on Youth in Agriculture with a call on the Ghanaian youth to take advantage of the incentive packages to venture into agriculture as another avenue for job creation.
He said this while delivering his keynote address at the launch of the initiative by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in collaboration with the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) at the University of Ghana in Accra on Wednesday.
The President noted that, youth unemployment was a challenge to the nation, and the government was committed to addressing the scourge among the youth through innovative interventions like the Agriculture programme.
He therefore urged the youth to rally around the initiative to form cooperatives and partnerships to derive the needed benefits to accrue from the implementation of the programme.
He explained that with the off-taker arrangement and the incentive packages spelled out in the initiative, there was no excuse on the part of the youth not to venture into Agriculture.
He predicted that successful implementation of the programme could lead to an increase in food supply and a decline in food costs in Ghana.
Akufo-Addo expressed the hope that Ghana would witness a drastic reduction in food inflation to a single digit by the end of his tenure in office.
The Minister of Employment, Labour Relations, and Pensions, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, in his remarks also noted that,, the Ministry remained resolute in exploring various avenues of addressing youth unemployment, and agriculture holds promise in that regard.
He explained that, one of the quickest solutions to addressing unemployment was to harness agriculture because studies had revealed that agriculture was one sector area that was not well tapped to derive the benefits of job creation among the youth.
The Chief Executive Officer of the YEA, Kofi Baah Agyepong, encouraged the youth of Ghana to be interested in agriculture.
He explained that, the detailed incentive packages were to motivate the young farmers to venture into agriculture and address the stigma faced by young graduates desirous of going into farming.
