Land Access and Youth Participation in Agriculture: The case of Zimbabwe.

BcA. Trevor Tanaka Moyo, BSc

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Abstract Since the year 2000 when the Fast-Track Land Reform Program was introduced, agriculture in Zimbabwe moved from commercial production to subsistence levels with most large farms being unproductive and/or underutilized. As a result of this, Zimbabwe has been on the edge of man-made food insecurity and deteriorating agriculture sector. Agricultural development in developing countries is very crucial to increase food security as well as provide employment for the youth. The youth constitute over 60 % of the population in Zimbabwe and engaging them in agriculture is an important step towards achieving sustainable agricultural development. Despite this prominence of agriculture, more than 70 % of the young people in Zimbabwe are unemployed and their participation in agriculture remains very low. In most study cases, the youth are excluded in agriculture due to lack of access to land, lack of access to finance, inadequate access to agriculture information, lack of experience and/or skills in agriculture, lack of access to markets and low profitability in agriculture. The main objective of the study was to explore factors that affect youth participation in Zimbabwean agriculture. A sample of 155 agriculture students from Gary Magadzire School of Agriculture, Great Zimbabwe University was purposively selected, and convenience sampling was employed for sampling purposes. Descriptive statistics were used to summarise and present the responses concerning factors that influence youth engagement in agriculture. The independent samples t-test was employed to compare mean differences between the students who were involved in agriculture and those who were not involved. Lastly the Linear Regression Model was used to analyse the factors that influence the interest of the students to work in agriculture. From the t-test there were significant difference between the two groups in terms of access to land, year of study, age and occupation of parents. Results from the model showed that lack of access to finance had significant influence on the respondents’ interest to work in agriculture whilst it was opposite for lack of access to land and information. Combined the study findings showed that lack of access to land and finance negatively affected youth engagement levels in agriculture.

Keywords

Youth, Land Access, Participation

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 6. 8. 2021

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: doc. Ing. Miroslava Bavorová, Ph.D.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences

Master programme / field:
Tropical Agriculture / International Development and Agricultural Economics