NYSC Renews Push for Youth Agribusiness Fund

Dayo Thomas |AgricNews Digest

The National Youth Service Corps is making its position clear: corps members will no longer be spectators in Nigeria’s food story.
NYSC has signed a fresh 3-year Memorandum of Understanding with BAT Nigeria Foundation under the “Farmers for the Future, F4F” program. The goal is not another workshop. It is to build a generation of young agripreneurs who see farming as a modern, scalable business and not as survival tilling. With this partnership, NYSC is using its nationwide platform to reposition agriculture in the minds of graduates, turning service year into a launchpad for food production and job creation.

NYSC Director of Skills Acquisition & Entrepreneurship Development, Mr. Kehinde Aremu, put it plainly: “Empowering young people to achieve food security is a national priority.” That priority means moving youths away from the idea of small garden farming and toward enterprises that can employ, process, and compete in real markets. The strategy is simple. Give corps members skills, give them structure, and give them capital. When agriculture is treated as business, it stops being an option of last resort and becomes a career of first choice. That shift is what NYSC is betting on to make Nigeria more economically resilient.

This renewed MoU is not just talk. BATNF has committed up to ₦10 million in grants for six outstanding corps members with viable agribusiness ideas. Money alone is not enough, so winners will enter a bootcamp, receive one year of tailored mentorship, financial management training, and direct access to markets. It mirrors the work NYSC is already doing with Leventis Foundation, which has trained over 31,000 youths and awarded up to ₦2 million in grants at its 2025 Agribusiness Summit. Together, these programs close the gap between knowledge and execution. Skills without funding die. Funding without mentorship wastes. With both, a corps member’s poultry pen or fish pond can become a registered brand.

NYSC Director General Brig. Gen. Olakunle Nafiu captured the urgency: Nigeria faces high youth unemployment and growing food security concerns, yet “in every challenge lies an opportunity. Today, that opportunity is agribusiness.” States are catching the vision. Nasarawa State recently donated 16 hectares of farmland to NYSC to expand production and self-sufficiency. That land, paired with training and grants, answers the exact question Minister Bagudu keeps raising: what is the point of training youths if they have nowhere to farm? NYSC is now providing both the classroom and the field.

NYSC is not just preaching food security. They are funding it, training for it, and putting land and grants into the hands of corps members who are willing to build. The message to every Nigerian youth is the same one we keep repeating: dreams without action become nightmares. But action with training, funding, and land? That becomes a harvest.