The Malabo Montpellier Panel has called on governments across African countries to strengthen their agrifood systems to create employment opportunities for young people.

The panel said that enhancing Africa’s food systems is critical to creating quality jobs, improving food security, reducing poverty, strengthening climate resilience, advancing industrialisation, and fostering inclusive growth.

On Wednesday, a 2026 report by the panel’s team of experts stated that enhanced agrifood systems can generate “productive jobs” needed for Africa’s growing youth population, provided appropriate policies are in place to accelerate transformation.

In its latest report, titled ‘Job Harvests: Policy Innovations for Inclusive Agrifood Employment in Africa’, it noted that resolving the central challenge of unemployment in Africa would require “coherent policies, capable institutions, sustained investment and inclusive implementation”.

The report, which drew its case studies from Ethiopia, Nigeria and Rwanda, estimated that about 70 million young Africans are currently employed, educated or undergoing any training, warning that by 2040, Africa would need to create around two million jobs per month to absorb new entrants into the labour market.

Commenting, the co-chair of the Malabo Montpellier Panel, Ousmane Badiane, noted that the foremost employment challenge in Africa is the quality of jobs, noting that factors such as safer workplaces and fairer opportunities are essential to ensure that working within the food system truly improves lives and livelihoods.

Mr Badiane restated that addressing interconnected challenges, such as demographic pressures and climate change, was equally essential to enabling agrifood systems to drive inclusive employment.

Joachim von Braun, a co-chair of the panel at the Centre for Development Research at the University of Bonn, urged governments to improve agricultural productivity as a pathway to creating long-term employment.

Using Nigeria as a case study, the panel noted that improved employment planning and job-matching initiatives have helped to strengthen labour market coordination. It added that specialised agricultural universities and the Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme in Nigeria equipped young people with the skills needed for modern agrifood value chains.

“Between 2015 and 2024, the Bank of Industry mobilised more than $7 billion in catalytic capital, financed more than 5.4 million enterprises and contributed to the creation of more than 15 million jobs,” the report said.

It called on stakeholders across African countries to “prioritise agricultural productivity growth as the foundation for broader employment transformation,” while ensuring that skills development becomes demand-driven.

The panel urged African countries to “strengthen employment policies to advance decent work, productivity and inclusive labour markets, advance occupational safety and health systems to improve job quality, and expand and strengthen public works programmes while integrating them with social protection”.

“Strengthen one-stop business support institutions to lower barriers to enterprise growth, increase formal job creation, and expand digital labour and market information platforms to improve job matching and market access. Strengthen high-level institutional coordination to support integrated employment outcomes,” the report stated.