Can young agripreneurs improve their skills through agripreneurship empowerment programmes? Evidence from Africa.

This article examined the driving forces behind young agripreneurs' participation in agripreneurship empowerment programmes and estimates the causal impact of programme participation on agripreneurship skills using data from a random cross-section sample of 1435 young agripreneurs in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. Specifically, the study took evidence from the youth component of the African Development Bank Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) programme, Empowering Novel Agribusiness-Led Employment (ENABLE). An endogenous switching model was used to identify factors that significantly informed participation decisions and assess the programme's impact on youth agripreneurship skills. Age, education, agripreneurship experience, business level, current residence, and training perception significantly influenced participation. Even though both programme participants and non-participants had high agripreneurship skills scores, participants had higher scores across the three countries than non-participants. The causal impact estimation from the switching regression model also indicates that participation has a positive and significant impact on agripreneurship skills, which implies that the higher score achieved by participants could be attributed to their involvement in the ENABLE-TAAT programme. These results suggest raising awareness of youth agribusiness empowerment programmes and encouraging youth to participate more actively. Additionally, the result suggests the need to implement strategies that could change young people's negative perception of agricultural interventions for increased participation.

Can nutrition-sensitive intervention and programmes reduce household's food insecurity among the communities affected by Boko-Haram insurgency in Nigeria?

Dwindling food security situations that arose from Boko-haram insurgence experienced in the northeast of Nigeria has led to an urgent need to respond to the food and livelihood requirements of families who were affected by the conflicts in this region. This is necessary in order to enhance their food and nutritional security and livelihood activities. Thus, examining the status of malnutrition of households in the intervening communities is imperative. Therefore, primary data were collected from some selected households within the region using multi-stage sampling procedure. Descriptive statistics, Dietary Diversity Score (DSS), Heckman and Tobit Models were the analytical tools employed. The study revealed that food aid constitutes an integral proportion of the total expenditure of households on food in the intervening communities. Level of malnutrition also reduces from 40.58 to 16.7% due to the impact of the sensitization programme on households' consumption of nutritious foods. However, there is still a high level of malnutrition (68.79%) among the children that are 5 years and below. Social capital formation and group-specific nutritional policy strategies directed at the internally displaced persons (IDPs) and children that are 5 years and below are panacea to reducing malnutrition in the region.