People interested in agribusiness could soon start accessing opportunities such as funding including grants, employment, and training, under one roof: R-YES agri-employment hub, which is a new online platform, according to its developers. R-YES stands for the Rural Youth Employment Support project which focuses on creating employment for rural youth in the agriculture sector. The project implementation in Rwanda is spearheaded by Kilimo Trust, a not-for-profit organisation working on agriculture for development across the East African Community – in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Kilimo Trust showcased the platform at the 16th National Agriculture Show (Agri-Show) which took place from July 20 to 29, 2023, at Mulindi showground in Kigali. ALSO READ: FEATURED: R-YES project leverages on agribusiness for youth jobs “The platform is like a one-stop centre for all opportunities in agribusiness,” said Andrew Gashayija, R-YES Project Team Leader, adding that it can be accessed both in English and Kinyarwanda. He indicated that it will benefit both opportunity seekers and providers, pointing out that opportunities might be in the form of funding including grants, jobs, market, advertisement options, as well as training. People who are targeted include the youth who need employment, or find a market opportunity for supplying their products or services under self-employment domain, he pointed out. ALSO READ: FEATURED - R-YES Agribusiness Project: Equipping youth with income-generating skills Gashayija said that by joining the platform, people get companies that are engaged in the domain corresponding to their needs – which can be a source of their employment or a market for their products and services. Again, he said, companies are able to access the contact database of skilled young people, such as farm managers or agribusiness technicians. Apart from getting skilled workforce such as technicians, companies can even advertise their products or services on the platform, he added. The platform, he said, comes to address an information access gap whereby some people do not know available opportunities, and are therefore not able to benefit from them. With the platform, he observed, registered people will be receiving notifications about new opportunities and try their chances to get them. “Basically, it is connecting opportunity seekers and opportunity providers,” Gashayija said. “We expect to see many people having various opportunities in agribusiness, and greater networking,” he said, adding “what we target is increased employment, especially for the youth through various opportunities.” On authenticity purposes, he said that there are administrators of the platform who do screening such as for company documents to verify whether the applicants are authentic, and to avoid a situation where some unscrupulous people might exploit its users. People who can create accounts on the platform include youth trained under R-YES project or those who studied courses related to what the project gives priority in terms of agribusiness, citing graduates from universities such as the University of Rwanda’s College of Agriculture, Animal Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (UR-CAVM). Eric Migabo, who created an account on the platform, told The New Times that he received training in animal feed production and formulation from R-YES project, and started putting to good use the skills he got by starting producing livestock feed in Nasho Sector of Kirehe District – under an agribusiness company called Gisaka Feed. Migabo expressed optimism that the platform could help address a lack of access to finance, which is a challenge for the youth, especially because of the demanding loan collateral requirement by banks. “By joining this platform, we are able to get various opportunities from many sources thanks to access to information on available opportunities that can help grow our businesses,” he said. “We have hope that this platform will help us to get financing to expand our businesses,” he added.
