Speaking at the launch on Tuesday in Accra, Director of Business Support and Policy, Mr.Franklin Owusu-Karikari said, Agriculture cannot be carried out as”Business as usual” in the context of the 4th industrial revolution to attract the teeming youth of our country.
Therefore there’s a need to change the negative perception the youth have of participation in agriculture, (farmers) as uneducated, unskilled, physical labourers with the extremely low economic return.
According to him , there’s compelling evidence of aging farmer population in the country and also Ghana’s food import bill for maize, rice, frozen chicken and meat continues to rise.
The initiative has been initiated to help take care of the aforementioned challenges, the program seeks to enlist young people between the ages of eighteen (18) to Forty (40) who are Ghanaians with Ghana Card, who are into Agriculture to be trained and funded.
The phase one application which has been open for application will be from 11th January to 5th February 2022.
Phase one will however solicit application from sectors under Agric Business such as Vegetable farming, Maize, piggery, Yam, Cassava and Agro-Processing.
He added that beneficiaries of the programme will receive an amount ranging from Twenty Thousand (20,000) to Two Hundred Thousand (200,000) Ghana Cedis as a flexible loan facility payable within 3-5 years at an interest rate of 10% per annum.
He also outlined the application procedure, the project is under the funding support of the Ghana CARES Obaatanpa Programme of the Ministry of Finance.
