Building Resilient
Communities
The agricultural sector, together with agribusiness, are projected to be a US$1 trillion industry in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. Agriculture has the potential to reduce poverty and improve food security more than any other sector and African universities have a direct role in driving that transformation.
Knowledge-based agricultural economies necessitate interdisciplinary collaboration among academics, governments, multilateral organisations, communities, businesses, and finance focused on high-impact interventions aligned with the global agenda of transdisciplinary knowledge sharing.
Building resilient communities in Africa requires a bold transformation of agriculture creating opportunities for youth and women, and making agriculture more attractive to the next generation.
Shifting rainfall patterns, rising temperatures and soil degradation are eroding the productive capacity of African farmland, disproportionately affecting smallholder farmers and rural communities.
Young people who constitute the bulk of Africa's population are increasingly moving away from agriculture spaces, threatening generational knowledge transfer and farm labour continuity.
Limited access to finance and volatile commodity markets expose vulnerabilities in the agri-food system sector, stalling investment and entrepreneurship at every point of the value chain.
The recent growth of enterprises in the African region primarily driven by young people has demonstrated the extraordinary potential of youth-led innovation to transform agriculture and agri-food systems.
Flagship Programme
TAGDev 2.0 is a ten-year partnership between RUFORUM and the Mastercard Foundation that seeks to strengthen universities and TVET institutions to better serve communities. It skills and empowers Africa's young people and their institutions to drive inclusive, equitable and climate-resilient transformation of agriculture and agri-food systems.
Higher and Agricultural Education (HAE) institutions generate learning, products, services, and processes that meet the needs and aspirations of agri-food system actors contributing to catalytic transformation and shared prosperity in communities and societies.
Learn MoreFocusing on agriculture value chains and wealth creation through student enterprises. Lessons are being scaled up under the Agri-food Systems Community Actions Research and Entrepreneurship (ASECs) programme.
Student-led enterprise challenges demonstrating RUFORUM's footprint at the community level, harnessing youth entrepreneurship as a lever for agricultural transformation.
Supporting co-generation of innovation to transform agricultural value chains through community action research and rural agro-business incubation hubs. This project is implemented in Uganda and Zimbabwe, by Nkumba University, Bishop Stuart University, and Uganda Martyrs University in Uganda, and the University of Zimbabwe and Chinhoyi University of Technology in Zimbabwe
Transcending boundaries in transformative education with a problem/challenge-based learning focus, adopting pedagogy grounded in community needs for agri-food systems development.
The AARIESI partnership framework aims to support Agricultural research, extension, and education initiatives to accelerate the application of science to create sustainable and decent livelihoods for African smallholder farmers, differently abled persons, women and the youth. The overall objective is to ensure that agricultural development and food systems in Africa are productive, profitable, offer products that are competitive in the global markets and are sustained by science-based solutions and interconnected world-class human resources and institutions.
Learn MoreRUFORUM plays a strategic and complementary role in supporting the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) with its programs explicity aligned under Pillar IV, which focuses on agricultural research, technology dissemination, and education.