The Fourth Plate

I come from Sierra Leone, a country where food is more than survival — it is the daily expression of resilience. Like many young people across Sub-Saharan Africa, my first lessons about food systems came not from textbooks but from farmers in my community, struggling with depleted soils, erratic rains, and the weight of feeding families under uncertainty.

One experience that remains vivid for me is the plight of women traders of perishable foods in Freetown’s markets. These women are the invisible backbone of our urban food system.

Yet, the rising heat and unpredictable weather made their work harder by the day. Tomatoes spoiled faster under extreme heat, leafy vegetables wilted before they could be sold, meat & meat products and women often bore the direct financial loss.

Without cold storage or proper market infrastructure, these climate impacts translated into wasted food, lost income, and greater food insecurity in households already stretched thin. For me, this was not just about agriculture — it was about justice, resilience, and dignity.

This early reality fueled my determination to pursue agriculture as both a science and a mission. I earned my Bachelor’s in Agronomy in Pakistan, where my thesis focused on the geospatial and farmer-perception assessment of climate change impacts on shifting cultivation in Sierra Leone.

Later, I contributed to research at the National Agriculture Research Centre (NARC) and the Global Change Impact Study Centre (GCISC) in Islamabad, where I worked on groundnut and soybean resilience, soil fertility, and climate impact assessments. These experiences taught me how scientific innovation, when combined with farmer knowledge, could offer climate-smart solutions.

Today, as an Erasmus Mundus MSc student in Sustainable Agrifood Systems in Hungary and Global Coordinator of the World Food Forum Sierra Leone Chapter (WFF@SL), I am more convinced than ever that youth must be at the center of food systems transformation.

And the numbers confirm this. According to FAO’s 2025 report The Status of Youth in Agrifood Systems, there are 1.3 billion young people globally, with 85% living in low- and lower-middle-income countries where agriculture remains central to livelihoods.

Alarmingly, 44% of working youth depend on agrifood systems for employment, yet youth food insecurity has risen from 16.7% to 24.4% between 2014–2016 and 2021–2023 — with the sharpest increases in Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, youth populations are expected to grow by 65% by 2050, underscoring the urgency of making agrifood systems not only more resilient but also more attractive to young people.

Equally important are the women at the heart of these systems. FAO’s 2023 Status of Women in Agrifood Systems report highlights that 66% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa rely on agrifood systems for employment, compared to 60% of men.

Yet, women farmers earn 18% less than men, and female-managed farms produce on average 24% less than male-managed ones, primarily due to unequal access to land, credit, and inputs. For women traders like those in Freetown, climate extremes such as heat waves compound these inequalities, undermining their resilience and livelihoods.

These realities are why I see my work in WFF@SL as more than an academic exercise. It is a platform to amplify youth and women’s voices, to create spaces where their experiences shape the dialogue on climate action and food systems transformation.

My international journey has also reinforced this conviction. In Asia, I witnessed how countries like Pakistan are experimenting with hydroponics, integrated pest management, and digital agriculture tools to overcome water scarcity and land pressure.

In Europe, I learned from advanced sustainability models that link research, policy, and market incentives to make agrifood careers more rewarding. These lessons, I believe, can be adapted to the African context: low-cost climate-smart technologies, investment in rural infrastructure, and policies that empower youth and women as change agents.

What keeps me inspired is the belief that agriculture should not be a livelihood of last resort for Africa’s youth but a pathway of innovation, opportunity, and impact.

My dream is for a Sierra Leone where women traders do not lose their produce to heat, where young farmers can access credit and digital tools, and where food systems are celebrated as careers of the future.

As FAO’s Director-General QU Dongyu rightly notes, empowering youth means creating “decent jobs, voice, and agency” so that we can be catalysts of transformation. If we inquire more, include more, and invest more, we can create agrifood systems that are resilient to climate shocks, inclusive of youth and women, and responsive to the challenges of tomorrow.

I share my story because it is not mine alone. It echoes the journeys of millions of young people across Africa and Asia who are striving against the odds to build a better food future.

And if my story can inspire even one more person to take the front seat in this transformation, then I believe we will be one step closer to a world where food systems truly nourish both people and planet.