African Agriculture Research Articles

Bridging the gap? Public–private partnerships and genetically modified crop development for smallholder farmers in Africa

Societal Impact StatementGenetically modified (GM) crops have the potential to address multiple challenges for African smallholder farmers but are limited by several institutional constraints. Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are seen as an organizational fix to one such constraint, bringing privately held intellectual property rights on key crop technologies to African public institutions to develop GM crops for smallholder farmers. Here, a new comprehensive dataset of GM crops in Africa is used to understand the extent and efficacy of PPP‐led GM crop development for smallholder farmers and discuss what might limit their potential in the future.Summary Genetically modified (GM) crops are promoted as a key tool to address multiple challenges in Africa, including the impacts of climate change and food insecurity. Observers have noted, however, significant institutional challenges to achieving such goals, most notably, intellectual property rights (IPR) to key GM traits being held by private companies who have limited incentives to develop those technologies for smallholder farmers. To bridge the gap between privately held IPR and pro‐poor crop breeding, advocates have called for increased funding for institutional innovations such as public–private partnerships (PPPs) to facilitate the transfer of crop technologies from private companies to public research institutes. For the past two decades, donors and firms have invested considerable resources toward PPPs. However, to date, few research efforts have empirically examined the extent and effectiveness of PPPs at the continental scale. This study draws from a new comprehensive dataset on GM crop research and development in Africa to examine whether the anticipated advantages of PPPs have resulted in an improved ability to deliver GM crops to smallholder farmers. We find that although PPP research has focused on crops and traits more relevant for smallholder farmers, many of these efforts have been suspended, with only one crop thus far reaching the hands of farmers. PPPs can address some issues related to GM crop development but still appear constrained by other institutional challenges, which may limit their development, reach, and the achievement of targeted benefits for smallholder farmers.

Farmers' Production Practices, Incidence and Management of Pests and Diseases, Extension Services, and Factors Limiting Cotton Production and Quality in South Africa

Cotton is one of the essential cash crops; however, several factors, such as low yields and pest and disease infestations, affect the production. In South Africa, cotton production has increased among small-scale farmers since the late 1990s. Although the crop is not new to South African farmers, no recent information reflects the current status of cotton production practices. A study evaluated farmers' production practices, the incidence and management of pests and diseases, extension services, and factors limiting cotton production and quality in South Africa. One hundred and forty farmers, mainly smallholder farmers, were interviewed during the 2017/18 growing season. Most farmers planted genetically modified (GM) cotton on less than 5 ha of cotton, with 96% planting under dryland. Most farmers neither practised conservation agriculture (95%) nor conducted soil analyses (87%). A mean cottonseed yield of 700 kg ha-1 was reported on dryland cotton, and 5 000 kg ha-1 was obtained from irrigated cotton. Most of the farmers (99%) harvested their cotton by handpicking. Farmers' pest knowledge was higher than their knowledge of different diseases. Most participants were unaware of nematodes (88%) or disease-resistant cultivars (74%), while 91% were aware of insect-resistant cultivars. Extension officers only mentored and supported many respondents (82%). Most farmers (93%) relied on pesticides to control cotton pests, and the rest (7%) used biological control. Climatic conditions (98%), labour costs (88%), and insect infestations (42%) were identified as the main constraints in cotton production. Although this study had a limited number of surveyed farmers, it gives some insight into their knowledge and challenges.

An Analysis of Factors Influencing African Indigenous Vegetable Farmers’ Bargaining Power: A Case Study from Zambia

Growing African Indigenous Vegetables (AIVs) is an innovative way to address poverty and malnutrition problems in Zambia. Farmers’ bargaining power plays an important role in increasing AIV production and farmers' income. Based on 300 responses from Zambian AIV farmers, we define AIV farmers’ bargaining power and analyze its benefits to farmers and the AIVs industry. We used the ordered logistic regression model (OLRM) to analyze the influences of several factors that contribute to farmers’ bargaining power. Three key results and innovations arose from the analysis of the data. First, we define farmers’ bargaining power through their self-reported bargaining power. Second, we find that the respondents’ bargaining power is significantly influenced by seven variables: age, gender, education, main trading partners, awareness of AIVs prices, and distance to the market from the farm. Last, farmers' bargaining power can be improved through education, especially women’s education level, strengthening farmers' organization construction, altering some of the farmers' trading methods, and developing infrastructure.

Field phenotyping for African crops: overview and perspectives.

Improvements in crop productivity are required to meet the dietary demands of the rapidly-increasing African population. The development of key staple crop cultivars that are high-yielding and resilient to biotic and abiotic stresses is essential. To contribute to this objective, high-throughput plant phenotyping approaches are important enablers for the African plant science community to measure complex quantitative phenotypes and to establish the genetic basis of agriculturally relevant traits. These advances will facilitate the screening of germplasm for optimum performance and adaptation to low-input agriculture and resource-constrained environments. Increasing the capacity to investigate plant function and structure through non-invasive technologies is an effective strategy to aid plant breeding and additionally may contribute to precision agriculture. However, despite the significant global advances in basic knowledge and sensor technology for plant phenotyping, Africa still lags behind in the development and implementation of these systems due to several practical, financial, geographical and political barriers. Currently, field phenotyping is mostly carried out by manual methods that are prone to error, costly, labor-intensive and may come with adverse economic implications. Therefore, improvements in advanced field phenotyping capabilities and appropriate implementation are key factors for success in modern breeding and agricultural monitoring. In this review, we provide an overview of the current state of field phenotyping and the challenges limiting its implementation in some African countries. We suggest that the lack of appropriate field phenotyping infrastructures is impeding the development of improved crop cultivars and will have a detrimental impact on the agricultural sector and on food security. We highlight the prospects for integrating emerging and advanced low-cost phenotyping technologies into breeding protocols and characterizing crop responses to environmental challenges in field experimentation. Finally, we explore strategies for overcoming the barriers and maximizing the full potential of emerging field phenotyping technologies in African agriculture. This review paper will open new windows and provide new perspectives for breeders and the entire plant science community in Africa.

Colonialism and Customary Land Tenure in Africa: Portuguese Representations and Policies During the 19th and 20th Centuries

ABSTRACT Colonial representations concerning ‘indigenous uses and customs’ have been the target of postcolonial critique. However, in the Portuguese case, the impacts of the colonial encounter with African customary land tenure has still to be analysed and correspondingly inquiring into the historical relationship between colonialism and the commons. This article focuses on the debates surrounding the ‘indigenous’ common property regime among the political and academic elites and its historical evolution. This, therefore, frames land policies and their legitimising discourse in their production contexts, revealing how customary laws were misrepresented both to deny local populations access to property and as an instrument of social control. Furthermore, this illustrates how the colonial academic and political elites portrayed community management and the transhumance of African agriculture and relate the discourse on the ‘indigenous’ customary law with the evolution of land policies; from the legal initiatives regulating the ‘appropriation of wasteland’ in the mid-nineteenth century through to decolonisation in 1974. This focus on the colonial legacies of land policies is particularly essential to environmental sustainability in Africa. Furthermore, this case study of Portuguese colonialism provides new insights into the production of imperial knowledge for defining and managing colonised populations by approaching the key issue of land tenure.

Factors Influencing Cassava Sales and Income Generation among Cassava Producers in South Africa

Assessing the factors influencing cassava sales and income generation among South African cassava farmers is critical for informed decision-making, policy formulation, targeted interventions, and the long-term growth of the cassava value chain. By recognizing these elements, stakeholders can improve market efficiency, increase income opportunities, reduce poverty, promote rural development, and nurture a sustainable and inclusive cassava value chain. This study examines factors that influence cassava sales and positive income generation along the cassava value chain. Using a simple sample method, we collected data from 240 farmers in the South African provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, and Mpumalanga. A logistic regression was used to investigate the impact of explanatory variables on the probability of selling cassava and earning a positive income. Findings show that having access to output markets, owning livestock, being a female, and having sizable land under cassava production enhances the possibility of cassava sales and generating a positive income. In contrast, age has a detrimental influence on cassava sales, while access to extension services and harvesting for household food consumption exhibited no substantial effects. The findings underline the importance of market access, gender equality, integrating livestock farming among cassava farmers, support for elderly farmers, and sustainable agricultural practices. To ensure the long-term positive generation of income by farmers and the sustainability of the cassava value chain, policymakers and stakeholders must collaborate and execute policies and interventions that address these essential concerns.

Structuring African Warehouse Receipt Systems to Succeed

Development economists have preached that functioning warehouse receipt systems (WRSs) will help smallholder African farmers access loans to help reduce poverty and enhance financial inclusion. Unfortunately, many reviews of African country WRSs have concluded that anticipated benefits are not accruing to smallholder farmers. Given the theoretical case and positive experience elsewhere, this paper meticulously reviewed reports that WRSs are not working in the interest of African farmers to identify the challenges. Then, several scenarios in respect of use of WRSs were formulated and analysed for Ghana and Uganda. Scenarios include paying/not paying collateral management fees, grading/not grading maize, using/not using warehouse receipts (WR) as collateral, using community warehouses, etc. Malawi and Zambia are also discussed. The paper concludes that the potential for positive impact of WRSs on the lives of smallholder African farmers exists. However, it is necessary to structure WRSs to suit the situation of smallholder African farmers. The key to profitably implementing WRSs in Africa is not to blindly replicate WRSs as implemented in other jurisdictions. Important African specific context ingredients include focusing on community warehouses rather than commercial warehouses, not focusing on grading of grains and not implementing full-scale collateral management arrangements. Keywords: warehouse receipts, smallholder farmers, Africa, Ghana, collateral management fees, community warehouses

Parallel tuning of semi-dwarfism via differential splicing of Brachytic1 in commercial maize and smallholder sorghum.

In the current genomic era, the search and deployment of new semi-dwarf alleles have continued to develop better plant types in all cereals. We characterized an agronomically optimal semi-dwarf mutation in Zea mays L. and a parallel polymorphism in Sorghum bicolor L. We cloned the maize brachytic1 (br1-Mu) allele by a modified PCR-based Sequence Amplified Insertion Flanking Fragment (SAIFF) approach. Histology and RNA-Seq elucidated the mechanism of semi-dwarfism. GWAS linked a sorghum plant height QTL with the Br1 homolog by resequencing a West African sorghum landraces panel. The semi-dwarf br1-Mu allele encodes an MYB transcription factor78 that positively regulates stalk cell elongation by interacting with the polar auxin pathway. Semi-dwarfism is due to differential splicing and low functional Br1 wild-type transcript expression. The sorghum ortholog, SbBr1, co-segregates with the major plant height QTL qHT7.1 and is alternatively spliced. The high frequency of the Sbbr1 allele in African landraces suggests that African smallholder farmers used the semi-dwarf allele to improve plant height in sorghum long before efforts to introduce Green Revolution-style varieties in the 1960s. Surprisingly, variants for differential splicing of Brachytic1 were found in both commercial maize and smallholder sorghum, suggesting parallel tuning of plant architecture across these systems.

Data note: Spatializing South African agricultural censuses, 1918–2017

ABSTRACT Agriculture is an intrinsically spatial production process. Where on the landscape agriculture occurs affects the environmental (e.g., soil, water, climate) factors that have large output and production risk consequences. The location of agriculture also has substantial logistic, policy and market performance implications. To facilitate analysis of the spatial dynamics of agriculture, we developed a collection of new ADM 2 boundary files whose geographical dimensions and naming standards map directly to the 18 agricultural censuses that report farm inputs, outputs and related statistics for South African agriculture over the period 1918–2017. The statistical aggregates – representing Magisterial and Municipal Districts –, changed in number, area size and boundaries over time. Cross-referencing these changing statistical aggregates to our newly digitised census boundaries, is an essential step for any geospatial assessment of the causes and (productivity and environmental) consequences associated with the changing physical footprint of South African agriculture over the past century.

Digital Technology Adoption in the Agriculture Sector: Challenges and Complexities in Africa

This article examines the trends and rates of digital technological transformation in the African agricultural sector. While the literature on digital technologies in sectors such as manufacturing, communications, tourism and hospitality, and education abounds, focus on the applicability, relevance, and adoption of digital technologies in farming, particularly by smallholder farmers in agrarian Africa, remains limited. This is a problem that can have huge scholarly and policy implications and therefore needs to be addressed, at least at an academic level. This article uses a literature review to explore the level of digitalisation in African farming, examine the contribution of digitalisation to productivity and sustainability, identify the key challenges to and drivers for digitalisation in African farming, and propose policy frameworks to strengthen the digitalisation of agriculture. The analysis reveals that there are a number of significant challenges that need to be addressed. These include resource scarcity, limited expertise and training, a lack of digital infrastructure, data privacy and security concerns, and resistance by farmers. In spite of this, the agricultural sector in Africa has the potential to adopt technology and not only boost farm productivity but also engender sustainable and environmentally friendly farming. This, however, requires the collective effort of the public and private sectors as well as communities.

The Impact of Public Agricultural Spending on Foreign Direct Investment Inflows in Agriculture in South Africa: An ARDL Analysis

Since the transformation of South African agriculture post-apartheid, public agricultural spending and foreign direct investment in agriculture were regarded as predominantly essential for the development of agriculture sector. However, many authors still argue whether public agriculture spending should be complemented by foreign direct investment inflows in agriculture or vice versa. Thus, the key focus of this paper is to investigate the impact of public agricultural spending on foreign direct investment inflows in agriculture in South Africa over the period 1991-2019. The Autoregressive distributed lag(ARDL) Bounds test and Granger causality were used to investigate both short run and long-run impact of public agricultural spending on foreign direct investment inflows in agriculture. The results of the long run model show that agriculture production has a positive and significant impact on foreign direct investment. However, public spending in agriculture has a negative and significant influence on the foreign direct investment inflows in agriculture. In addition, Granger causality results show causality flowing from public agriculture spending, net export and inflation to foreign direct investment inflows in agriculture. Hence, it is recommended that policymakers should take practical steps towards total eradication of misallocation and squandering of the available funds and redirected toward bridging infrastructural deficits, land restitution to promote foreign direct investment inflows the development of agriculture.

Ethnolinguistic and genetic diversity of fonio (Digitaria exilis) in Senegal

Societal Impact StatementFonio (Digitaria exilis—Kippist—Stapf) is a neglected cereal crop that plays a crucial role in the food and nutritional security of sub‐Saharan populations. Currently threatened with extinction in many countries, fonio, like other minor species, could help give insights into the history of African agriculture and provide clues to past social interactions. Highlighting and preserving genetic diversity that can be used to develop improved varieties improves food security. By recognizing the role of indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) in agrobiodiversity creation and management, this study provides support for strengthening the rights of rural communities and promoting their food and seed sovereignty as outlined in the United Nations UNDROP Declaration.Summary Fonio (Digitaria exilis) is a neglected cereal crop that plays a crucial role in the food and nutritional security of sub‐Saharan populations. It is an excellent candidate to diversify agricultural and food systems beyond Africa because of its adaptability and hardiness. However, fonio is threatened with extinction and the factors that organize its genetic diversity remain unknown, despite the fact that this knowledge is necessary to define conservation strategies and uses to achieve sustainable agriculture. Here, we combined social anthropology and population genetics analysis of 158 fonio landraces, thereby generating insight into the genetic diversity, population structure and evolutionary history of fonio cultivation in Senegal. We noted a spatial structure of genetic diversity at two embedded levels, with the first corresponding to the genetic differentiation between ethnic groups and the second to the demographic history of the Mande and Atlantic Congo linguistic families. Selection and seed exchange practices have contributed to shaping fonio genetic diversity at the ethnic level, while the migration of Fulani people over the last 500 years has fragmented the Mandinka kingdom, hence leaving a fonio diversity imprint. Our study highlighted that social factors are pivotal in structuring diversity and should be taken into greater consideration in research and conservation projects to dovetail local and regional scales. It also showed that neglected species such as fonio—which are seldom used in breeding and dissemination programmes—are key markers of the history of African agriculture.

Sowing Seeds of Sovereignty: A Qualitative Exploration of Chapter Leader Experiences Who Belong to an African, Caribbean, and Black Women's Agriculture Advocacy Collective.

African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) populations are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity since the COVID-19 pandemic, with reports including limited access to healthy, affordable, and available food resulting in the exacerbation of existing health disparities and poorer living conditions and environments. Many interventions addressing food insecurity among ACB populations incorporate downstream models that emphasize consumer-level solutions (e.g., food donation or assistance programs). While useful for developing short-term solutions, these approaches do not meaningfully engage broader structures and root-causes-and, in many ways, reify existing inequities among these populations. Missing from mainstream dialogue is how food insecurity inequities at the individual level are often generated at higher structural levels and the unique assets of a targeted community or population to grow/distribute their own food and restore frayed transnational cultural foodways. This paper documents a case study of an international, Black women-led agriculture education collective headquartered in the South-Central region of the United States. Drawing on in-depth interviews with affiliate chapter leaders in the United States, US Virgin Islands, and Africa (n = 22), the research investigates how chapter leaders describe unique opportunities and barriers to farming and developing food insecurity solutions. Emergent themes from the data analysis were: (1) diasporically linked barriers, (a) infrastructural/political barriers and (b) patriarchal barriers; (2) mobilizing strategies; and (3) cultural and context-specific solutions. Findings from this study contribute important insights for food security development research centering community-based and grassroots organizing models addressing inequities in food production and health.

Components of citrus pulp waste (eureka lemon and clementine) and yellow maize commonly used as livestock feed by south African farmers

Citrus is one of the most extensively grown fruits in several parts of the world. Therefore, its inustrial processing produces large amounts of pulp waste. This study was aimed at assessing the nutritive as well as mineral components of citrus pulp waste of Eureka lemon and Clementine from two Citrus farms while drawing potential comparisons with yellow maize for livestock feed. Proximate analyses were done using approved/standard analytical methods of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC), while the mineral constituents were analysed using an inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Proximate evaluation revealed that Eureka lemon and Clementine pulp waste contained comparable amounts of fibre and lipid, and significantly higher protein contents than yellow maize. Meanwhile, minerals including Ca, Mg, K, Na, Zn, Cu, Mn and Fe were significantly higher in the citrus lemon pulp waste than in yellow maize. The study therefore points out that the Citrus pulp waste have the potentials to be put to more relevant livestock nutritional use.

Are agricultural extension systems ready to scale up ecological intensification in East Africa? A literature review with particular attention to the Push-Pull Technology (PPT)

AbstractAgricultural extension, or advisory services, have a key role to play in supporting farmers’ learning and adoption of new practices and technologies. This paper analyses gaps and needs which require addressing in order for extension systems to more effectively contribute to the upscaling of ecological intensification approaches in East African smallholder agriculture. Our starting point is the push-pull technology (PPT), a promising approach. PPT originated in East Africa and is being continuously improved through cycles of interdisciplinary and participatory experimentation. Despite well-documented benefits to farmers and the environment, more institutional support from agricultural extension systems (AES) is needed for PPT to realise significant impact on poverty reduction, food security, and sustainability. Departing from this assessment, we review literature on AES in five East African countries. After clarifying the AES characteristics that ecological intensification requires, emphasising the capacity to embrace complexity, we identify four thematic areas that are in urgent need of attention: first, widely recognised problems with access and inclusiveness have seen welcome innovation but remain substantial. Second, information and communication technologies provide many benefits and new possibilities, but expectations must be tempered. Third, pluralistic AES present coordination challenges that risk undermining and misdirecting extension. Finally, the political-economic underpinnings of extension require critical scrutiny and strategic interventions. While many challenges threaten extension effectiveness broadly, we highlight implications for ecological intensification approaches like PPT. Our insights thus speak to the broader question of how to design and implement extension for sustainable agricultural development in East Africa.

An Outlook on Harnessing Technological Innovative Competence in Sustainably Transforming African Agriculture.

Agricultural value chains worldwide provide essential support to livelihoods, ecosystem services, and the growing bioeconomy. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic slowed down or reversed decades of agricultural growth and exposed the vulnerabilities of farmers and the food insecure in Africa, thus reiterating the need to build resilience, agility, and adaptability for a sustainable agriculture. Existing social, political, environmental, and economic challenges demonstrate that a path to faster sustainable growth is increased productivity through improved input quality, of which technical inputs are a part. This work presents a perspective calling for African innovative competence in technological and methodological applications and solutions as part of the most critical area of a holistic organization for social progress. It finds that while performances of previous agricultural transformation efforts offer insights for future directions, novel pathways fitting to the diversity of situations and contexts on the continent are needed. These may include vertical agriculture in land-constrained regions to grow high-value products, ocean or sea farming in coastal regions, development of multiple-harvesting crops, and self-replicating plants. Developing standards that integrate current scientific methodologies and technologies with indigenous knowledge for agricultural growth and disaster management will bring the complementary benefits of both worlds into optimal development.

Why current agroecology rhetoric stands to protract farmer poverty in the developing world

Like in the rest of the world, the vision for the future of agriculture in the developing world is highly contested. At the centre of this oft-polarized debate, a growing constituency of advocates suggests a large-scale shift to agroecology as the key to transforming Africa's agriculture. Yet, this rhetoric is not only quixotic in its vision for an African agricultural revolution but also profoundly dissociated from the realities of African agriculture. If the aim is to revolutionize African agriculture, rigid philosophical fixations on an idealized farming system are not the answer. For resource-poor farmers looking to lift themselves out of poverty in Africa and the rest of the developing world, such a narrative will only protract the status quo. Most crucially, it represents a pathway that stands to drive them deeper into poverty. Agricultural transformation in the developing world requires a pragmatic outlook, one that leverages the best of agroecology and modern agricultural solutions for smallholder farmers.

From creating to confronting racial hierarchies: The evolving role of the US state in land policy

AbstractFrom systemically dispossessing Indigenous people of their territory for Euro‐American settlement to routinely denying African American farmers operating loans in the 20th century, the US government's complicity in creating racial hierarchies in terms of land access is well documented. Less understood is how land policies oriented towards racial equity, namely, the Justice for Black Farmers Act (JBFA), and other initiatives that deal with land access as well as addressing racism more broadly, emerged during recent decades. In this article, we argue that such initiatives resulted from Black‐led organizations and other farmer advocacy allies responding to neoliberal policy reforms. Concretely, even as these reforms destabilized farm economies, they also led to a decentralization of agricultural policy administration, which, in turn, created opportunities for community‐based organizations to influence land governance. We make this argument after presenting a three‐part periodization of the evolution of US land policy, starting with the emergence of racial hierarchies, then the period of partial reforms that began during the New Deal and, finally, the era of neoliberal reform.

COVID-19 impact on agriculture and food security in Africa. A systematic review and meta-analysis

While agriculture is the life-wire for many African economies, the sector has been exposed to multiple shocks, leading to food insecurity concerns. COVID-19′s seemingly perennial nature suggests the need for African agrarian systems to explore pathways to achieve food security in the midst of pandemics. However, existing knowledge on the effects of COVID-19 agriculture and food security remains fragmented. This article reviews preliminary documented and projected effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on agriculture and food security in Africa, combining an inter-rater reliability (IRR) – based systematic review with meta-analysis on 74 rigorously selected published items, including 157 case studies. Our analysis hitches on the sustainable livelihoods framework and a novel systematic review and meta-analysis protocol (Tadesse, 2020). An IRR score of 0.93 suggests overwhelming convergence of contemporary COVID-19 scholarship on the negative economic effects of COVID-19 on agricultural supply and demand across Africa, which, in combination with other factors, culminates in increasing, multi-dimensional food insecurity, hitting hard on the poor and vulnerable. The meta-analysis suggests that agriculture is more exposed to COVID-19 effects than other (non-agricultural) sectors, with an overall pooled association effect size (RR) for the COVID-19 pandemic and farming occupation of 1.25 (95% CI, 0.72–0.96;P = 0.01), and significant heterogeneity between studies (Ι2 = 100%,P < 0.00). Future reviews and meta analyses increasingly focusing on methodological details are recommended, to provide insights on COVID-19 effects on African agriculture and food security. Policy implications of prolonged COVID-19 effects on agriculture and food security in Africa are then contemplated.

Enhancing youth's retention in potato farming enterprise through consortium agribusiness models in Tanzania

AbstractThe future of African youth probably lies in agriculture; however, this can be realized by making agriculture both profitable and attractive to young people. The importance of increasing youth involvement in agricultural value chains is primarily to sustain food production and secondly to reduce youth unemployment. Youth can be involved in various segments of agriculture and food value chains including production, post‐harvest handling, distribution, value addition, and marketing. In Tanzania, Agri‐Hub networks promote entrepreneurship by linking the youth to processing, markets, agricultural input dealers, extension services, and the promotion of existing and emerging agribusiness opportunities. It is believed that market access is critical in igniting an agricultural transformation that will upgrade African farmers (youth) from subsistence to business‐focused production. Kilimo Trust in Tanzania has been employing an innovative consortium agribusiness model to efficiently link youth farmers to outputs and inputs markets. The model helped these farmers in accessing sustainable, profitable, and structured input and output markets, particularly those engaged in potato production. Thus, a study was designed to find how the consortium business model influences youth engagement and retention in potato farming enterprises. The study employed a multistage sampling technique to collect data from 144 participants and 120 non‐participants of the consortium business model. A questionnaire and key informant interviews were employed to collect data. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, content analysis, and propensity score matching. The findings of this study reveal that young small‐scale farmers participated in collaborative procurement of inputs and marketing of potatoes and attended training during project implementation. The results further show that participation in the consortium business model has a positive and significant effect on youth's retention in potato farming enterprises. Youth potato farmers participating in the consortium business model have higher profit per hectare (2,392,326.5TZS/Ha) than youth in groups not utilizing the consortium business model to the group membership (2,170,405 TZS/Ha). Therefore, this study recommends that governments support policies that will facilitate the establishment and strengthening of the consortium business models. This will assist in sustainably engaging and retaining youth in agriculture through increased productivity and profit.