Steven Jonckheere covers the International Fund of Agricultural Development - IFAD's work with Youth and Land Tenure. The presentation, discusses the challenges youth face when it comes to accessing land and closes with why we should invest in youth in the rural areas. This presentation was designed for and delivered at the ILC organized Global Land Forum Break Out Session: Successful Strategies of Land Access for the New Generations, held in Dakar, Senegal on the 13th of May 2015.

1. Youth and land tenure
Steven Jonckheere
International Fund for Agricultural Development
Global Land Forum
Dakar, 13 May 2015

2. Why invest in youth in the rural areas?
• Agriculture as engine for growth and food security
• Requirements for energy, innovation and physical strength
• Key to meeting the world’s future food needs
But young
farmers face
challenges in
accessing land

3. Challenges in accessing land
• Refrains from starting a farming
activity
• Young farmers have to wait years
before inheriting their share of land
• Land use decisions made by
elderly
• On-going subdivision of land
• Effects of climate change
• HIV/AIDS pandemic has resulted in
increasing land grabbing
• For young women it is even more
difficult to acquire land

4. Options to facilitate access
• Group acquisition of land and cooperative farming
• (Family) land transfer intra-vivos
• Distribution by the state
• Facilitating sharecropping arrangements
• Relaxation of controls on rental
• Strengthening of legislation and legal services to youth
in order to recognize and defend their rights to land

5. Examples from IFAD supported projects
Sierra Leone Egypt Mozambique
Rehabilitation and
Community Based Poverty
Reduction Project
West Noubaria Rural
Development Project
Pro-poor Value Chain
Development Project in the
Maputo and Limpopo
Corridors
Long-term leases of large
areas of land for tree crop
production
Reclaim land to produce
food
Assessment of specific land
tenure situation and needs
Agreements between youth,
land owning family,
Paramount Chief and Local
Council
Loans for land – with a 30-
year repayment period and
a grace period of five
years
Civic education on the Land Law
and associated legislation
Targeting young women and
men who have no or little
access to land or are
unemployed
Targeting the country’s
large number of
unemployed graduates
Equitable access in irrigation
schemes and new cassava
production blocks
Representation of youth in
institutions managing grazing land

6. Conclusion
Programmes addressing
access to land should
include special provisions
to assist young people