From 22 April to 1 May, representatives of Fekama – Madagascar and Coopara – Cote d’Ivoire carried out a study trip to Cameroon to discover the Afop program, a flagship program of the Cameroonian State in training, education, and installation of rural youth. Back on a study trip rich in teachings.

Train and help the integration of young farmers

The installation of young farmers. A concern shared by many African producer organizations, including Fifata and Fekama in Madagascar and Coopara in Côte d’Ivoire, both partners of Fert and involved in the TransFert multi-country program.

Since the beginning of the TransFert dynamic in 2015, they have been able to reflect together on this theme and share their initiatives to promote and support the establishment and integration of young people in agriculture: the 5 regional agricultural colleges set up by Fifata and federated In Fekama, an entity of the Fifata group in Madagascar, and the Youth Integration Program carried by Coopara in Côte d’Ivoire. The numerous exchanges and working sessions allowed each of these POs to enrich their reflections on their own professional insertion and integration in the territory.

Discover the Afop program

In order to deepen their work, Coopara and Fekama appointed each of the representatives to go to Cameroon from 22 April to 1 May 2017 in order to discover the emblematic Afop program, initiated in 2008 by the Government of Cameroon, A renovation of the system and rural training centers, a mechanism to support the installation of trained young people in agriculture. A program often cited as a model of sustainability and effective public-private partnership.

While the Cameroon government’s strong involvement in the Afop program was of interest to Fekama and Coopara, the continuum between training and installation, the foundation of the program, was a key factor for the success of the program. Program, which echoes their close experience.

On the program of this immersion in Cameroonian land: two days of exchange in Yaounde in the premises of the coordination of the program and then visits and meetings in regions to meet different local stakeholders.

Reflection

Before returning home, all the participants took the time to debrief to take stock of their findings and draw initial conclusions. Thus, although the success of the program did not fail to impress Malagasy and Ivorians, they nevertheless noted the added value of their own systems in that they strongly implied the agricultural profession, which was the guarantor of the overall strategy of the initiative. Thanks to the impact study carried out by students from the IRC Montpellier SupAgro, Afop Cameroon and Fekama Madagascar, participants assessed the value of relying on this type of work to realize Advocacy work with the state.

Representatives of Fekama and Coopara left with new ambitions in terms of training, integration and linking to the territory.

  • For Fekama, for example, it is a matter of submitting to their Board of Directors a better way of encouraging family-oriented internships, thinking about improving the boosting endowment or strengthening market knowledge to support young people in The development of innovative activities (processing, export sectors …);
  • For Coopara, a project was proposed for the construction of training references for young people and agricultural advisers, a reflection on the appropriateness of mobilizing resource persons to follow the young people in addition to the integration counselors already in place, or , To reflect on a greater involvement of territorial actors in the system for the integration of young people into agriculture

Exciting reflections and perspectives for these various training and integration schemes for young people carried out by producer organizations aware of the challenge of training young farmers in agriculture.