Can rural youth farm their ways out of poverty? Experience from vocational skills in Uganda

The government of Uganda adopted vocational skilling as one of its strategy of addressing youth unemployment. However, youth vocational aspiration has been biased against agriculture. Using a three-year cohort tracer study, I show that agribusiness (29%) lifted more graduate youth out of extreme poverty than services/trade (12%) and manufacturing (22%) sectors. I therefore recommend a deliberate targeting of agricultural vocational training, as well as the re-orientation of Business, Technical, and Vocational Education and Trainings (BTVETs) institutions to youth training in strategic high-impact agro-enterprises so that agriculture attracts and provides decent employment for rural youth.