Many young Africans see farming as the backbreaking work of previous generations - not a pathway to the future.
But a growing number of African youth are discovering that agriculture can also be good business. With the right mix of entrepreneurial skills, digital tools, mentorship and access to finance, they are building agribusinesses that turn a profit, create jobs, strengthen food systems and contribute to economic growth.
Bah Hassanatou, a 29-year-old entrepreneur from Kindia, Guinea, saw an opportunity in farming pineapples. Seven years ago, when many of her peers sought work elsewhere, she started Jumelle Agri Business, a fresh pineapple juice enterprise.
But turning a promising idea into a sustainable business proved more difficult than she expected.
Operational challenges and limited business management experience threatened the future of her enterprise. The business struggled to grow until Hassanatou joined the African Development Bank Group-funded Project to Increase the Resilience of Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, valued at $927,807 and financed through the Bank's Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Multi-Donor Trust Fund.
Implemented by Oze Inc., which provides digital tools to help entrepreneurs manage and grow their businesses, and Dare to Innovate, which delivers entrepreneurship training and mentorship, the project supported young entrepreneurs in Guinea, Benin and Ghana from October 2023 to March 2025.
Hassanatou said the support helped her improve how she planned, managed and grew her enterprise.
"I established a growth strategy, structured my activities, strengthened resilience, and set concrete goals by diversifying sales using digital platforms to expand my customer base," she said.
Today, Hassanatou has nearly tripled company annual turnover, cultivating 45,000 pineapples. She says she diversified her product line to include fresh fruit sales and now She employs 17 people, five of them permanently. Hassanatou uses the Oze mobile application to track business activities and gain insights into business performance, helping her make more informed decisions as she continues to expand her business.
The project impact is also evident in neighbouring Benin. When heavy rains destroyed the shed, crops and livestock of 27-year-old entrepreneur Dramane Abou shortly after he launched his agricultural venture - he feared his business would not survive.
"The training helped me bounce back. I secured a loan and relaunched my business with a better strategy," Abou said. "I now grow cereals on a five-hectare plot, sell cattle and am gradually increasing productivity."
Today, Abou employs 13 people, nine of them women, and says that his company's turnover averages around $30,000 per year.
"I want to...prove to other young people that success and job creation are possible locally," Abou added.
Meghan McCormick, co-founder and chief executive officer of Oze, said combining digital record keeping with business coaching enables entrepreneurs to better understand their businesses while giving lenders the confidence to extend credit.
"The digital record keeping, combined with business coaching under the project, enabled us to assess the business and enable them to borrow and be able to repay those loans," she said. "These loans are growing their businesses."
The Oze application uses data to help entrepreneurs understand and improve their businesses. Dare to Innovate mentored and trained 4,500 enterprises in Guinea, Ghana and Benin - half of them led by women - on how to better run business enterprises, on cash flow management, digital marketing, and using the Oze application.
Djibril Souaré, the project's coordinator and country director for Dare to Innovate in Guinea, said low-interest and unsecured loans, repayable over six months, enable young entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.
Martha Phiri, the Bank's Director for Human Capital, Youth and Skills Development, said the project demonstrates how entrepreneurship support, digital innovation and financing can help youth realize their goals to build sustainable, profitable businesses.
"This and other projects show that mentorship and access to finance enable young entrepreneurs to overcome hurdles they face when they start enterprises," said Phiri. "Such interventions help scale and formalise small to medium enterprises, thereby contributing to economic development."
This is one of the several Bank initiatives to support Africa's young entrepreneurs. Since 2017, the Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Multi-Donor Trust Fund has been a key enabler for young entrepreneurs. The Fund supports the Bank's Jobs for Youth in Africa Strategy through catalytic grants to empower youth-led start-ups and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises operating in formal and informal sectors.
By helping young entrepreneurs turn ambition into thriving enterprises, initiatives such as this advance the Bank's Four Cardinal Points vision, including harnessing Africa's youth demographic as an economic dividend. They demonstrate how strategic investments in young people can create jobs, strengthen local economies and build a more prosperous and resilient Africa.
