News Release

Madison, Wis. — African youth struggle with climate change, food insecurity and damage to the environment, but end up overlooked in conversations about potential solutions. Now, those young people are pointing to agroecology as part of a movement to protect their land and traditions.

In October 2024, more than 1,000 young people joined the first African Youth Summit, held by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A paper published in Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems in December 2025 by a seven-member team lead by Charles Tumuhe. The article focused on the events of the summit and calls for more youth training, leadership opportunities, and local land ownership.

People across Africa are organizing school gardens, organic markets, and advocacy networks to make lasting changes, but the youth at the summit cited limited land, funding cuts, and a lack of influence over policy as major issues. A promising solution is agroecology, which studies the connections between economics, the environment, and social conditions in farming. To these young people, agroecology isn’t just farming, but a means of strengthening local communities. Together, they shared ways to better develop these local farms and farm in ways that prioritize the environment over short-term yields. A recent global survey found that 70% of young people found their education on climate change inadequate, proving the need for solutions.

About 60% of Africa’s population is under 25, and most of those people live in rural areas. This makes the lack of agricultural funding devastating for their food supply. Young women in Africa have additional obstacle as discussions overlook them entirely. Still, countless youth networks across Africa are making farms more inclusive and fighting climate change.

The event unlocked new ideas for policies and innovations to give youth more decision-making and access to finance and land. The summit brought people together from a broad range of linguistic, gender and geographic identities across different member networks and partner organizations joined an open call.

Their goals align with policies promoted by the UN Committee on World Food Security, giving them a chance to get better support than their current outdated programs. Demands for land reforms were a common theme in the study: “without land security, youth confidence in the future of farming and agroecology remained fragile,” the authors wrote.

The summit attendees argued that without consistent and reliable access to land, they can’t farm on their own terms. While some youth wondered if these older methods could produce enough food to feed everyone, the youth reaffirmed that keeping their traditions alive and having more ownership over food production was far more important. Reclaiming land allows them to retake control of their farms from foreign agricultural businesses.

The First 1000 African Youth Summit proved that youth across Africa have the means, ideas and drive to change their agriculture for the better. They proved a lack of funding and support leaves rural African farmers in cyclical poverty. The study also revealed that these youth organizations will need policy changes to support their efforts.

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ASA, CSSA, and SSSA are part of the Alliance of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Science Societies (ACSESS), a nonprofit organization providing management and administrative support services to all three societies headquartered in Madison, Wis.