Nigeria has launched a national scheme to put land, training and finance in the hands of young farmers, tackling one of the biggest obstacles keeping them out of agriculture. The Federal Ministry of Youth Development, in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, unveiled the Youth in Agribusiness Land Trust Fund in Abuja on June 1, 2026, with support from First City Monument Bank, according to Vanguard.
Land as the Missing Link
The Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, said the fund would help support at least 500,000 youth-led agribusinesses and train more than six million young Nigerians over the coming years, while connecting them to local and international markets, Vanguard reported. The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, said insecure land tenure is the single biggest barrier for young Nigerians who want to farm, linking chronic land competition to the herder-farmer clashes and communal disputes that have long troubled the country, as Head Topics reported.
Turning Youth Centres Into Farms
The programme will convert the Ministry's 42 National Youth Development Centres into agribusiness hubs and, according to project planners at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, aims to unlock access to as much as 22 million hectares of land over a three-year period, Funds for NGOs reported. At the launch, ten young farmers were each awarded ₦1 million to scale up their ventures, according to the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation, which noted that more than 60 per cent of Nigeria's population is under the age of 30.
Drawing young people into farming and processing is one way to expand the supply that ultimately sets prices at the market. FoodPrices Nigeria tracks verified retail prices across Lagos markets, the practical measure of whether a bigger, younger farming base eases the cost of feeding a household.
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