Six years ago Emmanuel Koranteng, 33, gave up his job as an accountant in America and bought a one-way ticket to Ghana. He now has a successful business growing pineapples in a village near the capital, Accra. He says that even when he was far away from the farm, it was always in his thoughts.
Across the continent, Dimakatso Nono, 34, also left her job in finance to return to the family farm in South Africa. She left her lucrative job five years ago and moved from Johannesburg to manage her father’s 2,000 acre farm outside the Free State Province.
“I knew that if I came to assist my father, I would be able to actually make meaningful change,” Nono says. “At the beginning, we were not sure about what the animals were doing and where they were in the fields, so for me it was important to ensure that every single day, every activity that we do is recorded.”
This year’s drought across Southern Africa put an end to her apple, maize and sunflower crops. But Nono says she does not regret moving away from the corporate world. “I’m not always on top of the world but on such days I appreciate the fact that if I need to rest or recuperate, there’s no better place than here where you have the nature to support you.”
But both young farmers have found it difficult to get funding for equipment. For this reason, Koranteng has decided to stay small.
“If you are small and you don’t have funding, don’t try to do anything big. It’s all about being able to manage and produce quality because if you produce quality, it sells itself,” he says.
But there is to be made money in farming. A World Bank report from 2013 estimates that Africa’s farmers and agribusinesses could create a trillion-dollar food market by 2030 if they were able to access to more capital, electricity and better technology. “Agriculture has a bright future in Africa,” says Havard University technology expert Calestous Juma.
But to encourage more young people to return to the land, he suggests a simple solution: A name-change. “The best way to attract young people into farming is to define it as agribusiness – this entails making agriculture entrepreneurial and technology-driven.
