The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform & Rural Development has provided agricultural training and youth empowerment as follows:
a) Agricultural Training
A total of 2 238 youth have graduated in various programmes in Colleges of Agriculture for the past 5 years. In the main, the youth graduated from the following agriculture study fields: animal production, plant production, irrigation management and animal health.
Currently, a total of 2 540 young people are registered for various agricultural programmes at Diploma level in the 11 Colleges of Agriculture. Of the 2 540 youth registered, 960 are at first year level of their studies, 851 second year and 729 are at third year.
In addition to this, a total of 4 014 youth have been enrolled/registered in training related to the agricultural sector through the NARYSEC Programme in various provinces. Of these youth, 3148 have completed training, and 866 are currently engaged in training in various TVET Colleges and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) and are expected to finish by December 2021.
The Recapitalisation and Development programme provided credited and uncredited (on-farm hands on training) benefiting 1 785 youth.
The Department further supports youth who meet the requirements and are interested in pursuing scarce and critical skills in agriculture and land reform through bursary. Since the inception of the Department’s external bursary scheme, a total of 1 738 young people benefitted through under graduate and post graduate studies.
b) Young Farmers’ Development, Extension Services & Empowerment Opportunities
As a form of an exit strategy to the external bursary scheme, the Department further recruit unemployed agricultural graduates and place them in Commercial farms to enhance their employability and practical exposure. A total of 1 029 youth benefitted from graduate placement programme.
To give practically empowerment to youth through the Land Reform Programmes, the Department of Agriculture Land Reform and Rural Development allocated 181 703 Ha of land (81 farms) to young people since 2010/2011 financial year benefiting 295 youth.
A total of 989 youth received production support through 1HA -1 household programme further empowering this youth on their various sector related activities. In addition, 6 684 youth directly received support through Recapitalisation and Development programme.
The department is implementing the Strategy for employment of young unemployed agricultural graduates in extension and advisory services. Currently 215 unemployed graduates are employed whereby 46 is employed by DALRRD and a total of 169 is employed by Provinces as follows: Mpumalanga employs 53, Free State 30, North West 46 and Kwa-Zulu Natal employs 40.
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