Attitudes and perceptions of rural youth towards agribusiness as a profession in a post-conflict context. Evidence from South-Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

The global demographic dynamics with increasing numbers of young people will have varying socio-economic effects on low-income countries. The extreme poverty of young people, particularly in rural areas, is still much higher compared to the global average. Creating more and better jobs for young people is therefore an urgent priority of the century. Despite the recognized driving role of the agribusiness in economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction, there is evidence of a disengagement/disinterest of young people towards agribusiness. This study aimed to analyze the attitudes and perceptions of rural youth towards agribusiness as a profession career in South Kivu province. To deeply understand the complexity and cross-cutting nature of this issue, a systemic approach was used. A Likert-type questionnaire with a 5-points scale was used to conduct the survey among 456 rural youth aged 15 to 35 randomly selected using the Bernoulli Urn technique in Kabare, Walungu and Uvira territories. The study revealed that 53.5% of young people have a negative attitude towards agribusiness, 29.8% display a neutral attitude and only 16.7% of them show a positive attitude. 76.3% confirmed that they can only engage in agriculture when they have no other job. 77.6% declared that agribusiness cannot enable them to meet all their basic needs. After verifying the normality of the data, the Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests, were used to compare the perception scores of the different groups analyzed. The study revealed a statistically significant difference in personal and societal perceptions scores between different age groups, between men and women, as well as between different education level groups. A statistically significant difference in the economic perceptions scores was observed only between the different survey areas.