BCFN YES! 2018

In Africa, an estimated 122 million young people will join the labour force in the next decade – nearly three times more than the expected rate of decent jobs creation. In Benin, a small country of West Africa, most of the 75,000 new young people that annually enter the workforce do not find decent employment. Therefore, developing their entrepreneurial capacity to create their own, usually informal enterprise, mostly in the agricultural sector, is often the only avenue open to them for making a living. Hence, millions of dollars are being invested by governments and donors to support youth entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector. Unfortunately, the business environment is not much adapted to support this and our knowledge on how to shape it is very limited. This research aims to analyze the impact of the business environment on agricultural entrepreneurship among youth to tease out evidence-based insights on how to improve it.