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‘Side-hustling’ in commercial agriculture among young university graduates in Ghana
By Thomas Yeboah
Youth unemployment and under-employment in Ghana represent a major concern for policymakers and young people themselves. While the agriculture sector has been touted as having the potential to offer employment to the teaming youth, there is little research focusing on the steps and pathways with which young university graduates navigate to engage in commercial cashew production to build their livelihood. Drawing on qualitative research conducted with young university graduates in Nkoranza, a community in the Bono East Region of Ghana, we explore the steps and pathways with which they navigate engagement in commercial cashew production for the export market. A key finding of the study is that young university graduates engage in cashew production as a ‘side-hustle’ to supplement their income from their primary occupations, with some important gender and generational dimensions. We also found that young university graduates rely on social relations and existing land market to access the needed resources including land, credit and labour to engage in cashew production. The findings also indicate that young university graduates view cashew farms as long-term investments and have no plans to return to the city in future. Based on these findings, we argue that youth employment is not about a single job and that social relations continue to be a key resource in youth livelihood building. We further argue that despite the popular and existing policy narratives that young people are not interested in agriculture and/or rural areas, and that migration from rural to urban areas is the de facto option, investment and engagement in commercial agriculture as a side-hustle in addition to family concerns, rising cost of living in the cities and children's education motivate young university graduates to remain in the rural economy. © 2024 The Author(s). Geo: Geography and Environment published by the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Youth in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and higher education nexus: Diffusion of innovations and knowledge transfer
By Thomas Yeboah
Research literature has underscored the growing engagement of youth in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). However, no published study has explicitly investigated the symbiotic exchanges on how youth in ASM transfer acquired knowledge and practical skills to educational settings and how they in turn transfer their acquired knowledge in higher education institutions to the ASM sector. Based on our inquiry in Ghana, involvement of educated youth in ASM had resulted in a) diffusion of innovations to the ASM sector, b) skills/knowledge transfer on mineral processing, c) knowledge transfer on health and safety in mining, d) provision of equipment repair and maintenance services, and e) transfer of legal knowledge and processes to the sector. With the transfer of mining-related experiences to educational settings, three sub-themes emerged: f) sharing of ASM experience and knowledge with peers and tutors, g) experiential learning and practical understanding of theoretical concepts, and h) enhanced higher education-ASM industry synergies. In relation to these findings, we argue that the future of the ASM sector in Ghana and broadly sub-Saharan Africa concerning cleaner production and environmentally safe mining practices, to a greater degree, relies on educated youth who hold enormous promise to champion innovation and knowledge transfer to the sector. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
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