Promoting livelihood opportunities for rural youth - IFAD

Concluding remarks
The urgent need to intensify development
efforts on rural youth is increasingly
recognized by governments, civil society
organizations and international development
agencies. This is reflected in a variety of
exciting new initiatives that seek to improve
the livelihoods of disadvantaged rural youth.
The overriding challenge is to unleash the
energy and creativity of young people living
in rural areas, especially those who are the
most marginal and vulnerable. Rural youth,
and especially young women, need to be
empowered to become agents of innovation
and social actors capable of developing new,
viable models of rural development.
IFAD is increasing its support for rural youth
programming. As part of this effort, IFAD is
collaborating with the ILO to review
strategies and programmes for promoting
productive employment among rural youth
in developing countries. Given the enormous
challenges these young people face,
this support should be intensified in the future
with rural youth mainstreamed in all IFAD
policies and programmes.
The development of coherent, comprehensive
national policies on rural youth should
become a top priority for all governments,
but this must be backed up with more
research. The prominence of national action
plans for youth employment should also be
increased, and it is essential that they are fully
embedded in other key national planning
documents, especially PRSPs. This should be
closely linked with increased efforts to promote
youth participation in all areas of policymaking.
Finally, the knowledge base of what works
needs to be strengthened rapidly, especially
with regard to innovative, strongly pro-poor
rural youth development programmes and
projects that have been successfully scaled-up.
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