Youth agripreneurship development in Benin : lessons for scaling up from Songhai Center agripreneurs

Abstract

The advent of the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine have raised many issues, including the need and urgency to strengthen local food systems. Ecological agriculture and regenerative agriculture have been proposed as solutions to the numerous challenges faced by conventional agriculture. An innovative approach to regenerative agriculture has been being promoted by the Songhai Center in Benin (West-Africa) and has spread across the continent. A survey was conducted among 191 graduates from a training program delivered by the Center, aiming to equip young people with the entrepreneurial culture and organizational skills they will need to reproduce the Center's regenerative agricultural model. In the context of global crises such as drought, flood, and war, agricultural entrepreneurship is critical for rural development, youth employment in developing countries, and a resilient food system. It is thus important to assess the economic sustainability of such a system as well as its resilience, and how it contributes to strengthening the livelihoods of small producers. Survey data collected via face-to-face interviews from January to April 2023 was used in this study to characterize youths after their graduation from Songhai Center and identify the enabling factors as well as barriers to youth engagement in agricultural entrepreneurship in Benin. The companies created by those graduates have been classified according to their performance and the sustainability of their livelihoods, and the factors affecting the performance of those companies were identified. The summary statistics show that the average age of a graduate is 24 years. Two thirds are men (66.84 percent) and half (50 percent) are living in peri-urban areas. Their main motivation for enrolling in the program is that they have been inspired by the reputation of the center (31.05 percent), by the success of previous Center graduates (30 percent), and by being encouraged by a family member or a friend (26.32 percent). The model of agriculture promoted by the Center is not what motivates graduates to register for the center's training (8.95 percent). The hierarchical ascendant classification performed on the results of the factorial analysis of mixed data made it possible to identify 4 groups of graduates with similar characteristics. The logistic regression suggests that students that received complementary training apart from the one provided by Songhai Center(p=0.004), and those with a bachelor's degree (p=0.057) have a higher likelihood of being agricultural entrepreneurs,. Also, the number of years after graduation positively affects the likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur (p=0.000). While most of the graduate agripreneurs are on track to replicate the integrated production model of Songhai, lack of funding constitutes the main barrier to their engagement in agricultural entrepreneurship. This study provides insight into the effectiveness of agricultural entrepreneurship training, and the possibility of building a strong local food system based on the transfer of skills in sustainable and resilient agricultural models.