President Paul Kagame has said African governments need to play a greater role in reducing risks associated with financing young entrepreneurs seeking to invest in agribusiness. He said this on Thursday, September 3, at the Africa Food Systems Forum 2026 in Kigali, during a “Conversation with the President” session with young people. ALSO READ: Collateral gap threatens growth of young agribusinesses During the session, Musa Mishamo, a 34-year-old agricultural engineer from Tanzania and founder and CEO of Rada 360, a space-tech startup, asked how financial institutions could better support young people who lack the capital and collateral required to secure loans. “Unfortunately, a number of parts of our financial system, on our continent, are framed in such a way that they mostly avail capital to those who have it,” Kagame said. He said governments should intervene by taking on part of the risk and creating mechanisms that allow people without easy access to capital to obtain financing. “The government absorbing or derisking the activity the young people may be involved in, borrowing from the bank, actually has very high returns in the end. “Because those who are supported many times make money and they move up the ladder to do things that benefit them, the country and the economy.” Kagame pointed to Rwanda Development Bank (BRD) as an example of how government intervention can help bridge the financing gap. He said the institution was established with government and partner support partly to make capital available to people who would otherwise struggle to access it. ALSO READ: PM Nsengiyumva urges investment across Africa’s food value chains During the same session, Farida Mustapha, a 23-year-old agripreneur and co-founder of PureLube from Ghana, also asked what governments should do differently to make the agri-food system a major engine of job creation as millions of young people enter the labour market every year. Kagame said both young people and governments have roles to play in making the sector productive, but governments must focus on creating an enabling environment. “If the government doesn’t find ways to support people to be able to do more of what they are able to do or want to do... there is always going to be a problem.” He added that governments should also consider how to deal with financing that cannot be recovered. “For those loans you have given to people to support them that cannot come back, the government should find a way of absorbing that and making sure that the young people who are capable of doing certain things go ahead and do what they are capable of doing.”
