Ifpri Podcast

Presenters: Karen Brooks, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University and Keith Wiebe, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI Climate change matters for all people. Does it matter particularly for young people? If so, where and how? Countries with a high proportion of young job seekers (for example, those projected in 2030 to have 15% or more of their populations in the age group between 15 and 24 years old) are on average more dependent on agriculture than are countries with more mature population profiles. Regions with many rural young people (South Asia) and rapidly growing numbers (Africa south of the Sahara) are likely to remain reliant on agriculture in the coming decades. Of the projected slightly more than 500 million rural young people globally in 2030, two-thirds will be in Africa south of the Sahara and South Asia. In many African countries farming still employs over half of a rapidly growing labor force, and the absolute number of agricultural workers is still rising. Where agriculture is called upon to de