The Mastercard Foundation Scholar Programs celebrates 10 years this year as well as a six-year partnership with the Regional Universities Forum for Agriculture (RUFORUM). This partnership demonstrates why it is imperative to celebrate and reflect on partnerships that encourage co-creation, collaboration, and foster synergies to transform the Agricultural landscape through youth skilling in Africa. According to Assoc. Prof. Anthony Egeru, the Manager for Training and Community Development, the last six years of implementing the TAGDev project have been an amazing journey, with a lot of lessons from pilots to scaling. These achievements were made possible through deliberate efforts to provide opportunities to those that need them the most. The Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa works strategy which was launched in Uganda in July 2020 aims to enable more than three million young people in the country to access dignified and fulfilling work opportunities by 2030.
During the recent visit to the RUFORUM Secretariat by the Mastercard Foundation team led by Prof. Phil Cotton, Director for Human Capital Development at the Mastercard Foundation and Mr. Adrian Bukenya Mulindwa, Mastercard Foundation Country Head – Uganda, the dialogue focused on how to upscale the agribusiness innovations to address the youth employment challenge in Africa; addressing the quality of agribusiness initiatives and value addition for increased market access. It should be noted that the partnership has registered tremendous success despite the two-year Covid-19 global challenge. Some of the successes include the creation of 216 Agri-enterprises and over 1,328 jobs in 11 African countries.
The Mastercard Foundation and RUFORUM partnership has a unique and real-world approach designed to transform how universities working with Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVETs) are responding to Africa’s biggest challenge of youth employment and food security. Through youth skilling and upscaling Agri-enterprises, the partnership has registered great success over the years. Further, this partnership has registered a significant impact through the Community Action Research Projects (CARP) by engaging 11 African universities that are directly working with 74,037 smallholder farmers and improving their livelihoods subsequently.
The RUFORUM Blog 
Leave a comment