Cameroon is a country at the coast of West-Central Africa, located within the equator. It has a population of 27.94 million, predominantly young persons and unemployed. It has adequate arable land, a typical tropical climate with some parts of the country, experiencing rainfall twice per year.

The population depends mostly on rain and subsistence farming. To guarantee higher yields and off-season farming, irrigation needs to be promoted.

Over 80 percent of the population depends on rain and subsistence farming, with crops like plantains, bananas, potatoes, yams, cocoyam’s, cassava, corn, beans, groundnuts, oil palm etc. And some cash crops like cocoa, coffee, rubber, cotton with some produced by small holder farmers and others by giant agro-industrial companies.

Though Cameroon is blessed with fertile arable land, its food production does not meet up with her population’s food needs, owing to the use of obsolete farming methods of cultivation, tools, limited access to mechanization and agro-financing. Low agricultural productivity not only impacts the economy negatively, but enhances malnutrition, health and other socio/economic related challenges.

Mobilizing farmers into groups and enhancing their basic knowledge and farming methods while integrating their indigenous knowledge and transformation processes will modernize subsistence farming and make it more profitable and sustainable.

The insecurity in the North of Cameroon from Boko Haram and the Anglophone crisis in the English-speaking regions, of recent have wreaked havoc on the agricultural sector causing most farmers to abandon their farms, their main source of livelihood for safety reasons.

The effects of conflict, misery and poverty experienced by most Cameroonians and Africans in general, continue to serve as a push factor for many youths to leave the rural areas, to more affluent localities or countries as economic migrants and refugees. Some use very highly risky transit routes through the open heat of the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean seas, in poorly equipped boats, which have now become death traps for many. When some succeed to reach their destination, many get stock within the asylum system for close to a decade before their files are processed, with many rejected.

Agriculture constitutes 90% of untapped employment opportunities, guaranteeing employment and food security thus, hitting two birds with one stone.

The RAID pilot project will create over 10,000 direct job opportunities, especially for the struggling youths/women and grassroots community members, trying to survive under very hard socio-economic conditions, riddled with poverty, malnutrition, disease, conflict and climate change.