The Effect of Agricultural Training on Youth Farm Entrepreneurial Attitudes: Evidence from Folk Development Colleges in Tanzania

Abstract

Given the paucity of youth employment opportunities in the non-agricultural formal sector in developing countries much more needs to be done to attract youth into the agricultural sector. The main objective of this paper was to assess the influence of the agricultural training on youth farm entrepreneurial attitudes. A cross-sectional design was employed and 300 respondents were randomly selected from three Folk Development Colleges (FDCs). The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that youth have favourable attitudes towards farm entrepreneurship. Furthermore, a significant difference was found in terms of farm entrepreneurial attitude across sex, age groups, college and programme studied. It is concluded that training in colleges where agricultural courses are blended with an entrepreneurship course have positive influence on youth attitude towards farm entrepreneurship. It is generally recommended that more theoretical components on the socio-economic benefits of farm entrepreneurship need to be added to the existing curriculum.

Key Words: Courses, entrepreneurial attitude, intention, unemployment