AfricaRice and the Mastercard Foundation launch the RIZAO Program

Picture: Participants at the kick-off workshop of RIZAO program in Dakar (Senegal). (Photo credit: Mastercard Foundation)

From June 19 to 21, 2024, AfricaRice and the Mastercard Foundation organized a kick-off workshop for the RIZAO program in Dakar, Senegal. The RIZAO program, launched in June 2024 for five and a half years, has been designed in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. It aims to create employment opportunities for young people in the rice value chain in West Africa (Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Togo and Benin). This program is particularly designed to foster youth employment, especially women. RIZAO aims to reach 2,205,000 financially disadvantaged people in the rice sector and contribute to the creation of 441,000 jobs with 70% of which will be dedicated to young women.

The overall objective of this technical kick-off workshop was to discuss and plan the program's initial activities, to ensure that consortium members fully grasped the stakes and expectations for the first 100 days. This workshop provided an opportunity to explore the regional roadmap of the Young Africa Works strategy and the Foundation's policies (Finance, Gender and Inclusion, Impact Measurement Framework and Communication), to discuss action plans for enhanced synergy of interventions, to address program implementation modalities, to harmonize data collection tools for the baseline survey and to develop a roadmap for the first three months of activities. The workshop brought together around 20 participants representing the consortium made up of AfricaRice, MEDA and 35°NORD.

The program harnesses the support of various partners through 6 strategic pillars:

·       Pillar 1: Support seed companies run by youths

·       Pillar 2: empowering young smallholder farmers

·       Pillar 3: boost job creation through processing companies 

·       Pillar 4: improving market access to reduce poverty

·       Pillar 5: promote local rice

·       Pillar 6: establish an enabling legal and institutional framework

The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), made up of 8 countries with a population of 130.9 million, including 43.8 million young people, faces challenges such as unemployment and underemployment. Through its "Young Africa Works" strategy, the Foundation aims to create job opportunities for 6.2 million young people, 70% of these being women, over the next decade. The agricultural sector, particularly the rice value chain, offers significant employment opportunities for youth and women. Since October 2022, the Mastercard Foundation and AfricaRice have been working with various stakeholders in the rice value chain to better assess the sector’s challenges and promote job creation.

The Mastercard Foundation:

The Mastercard Foundation works with forward-thinking organizations to give youth in Africa and Canada's aboriginal communities access to decent and rewarding work. The Foundation is among the world's leading private foundations, with a mission to foster learning and promote financial inclusion for a more inclusive and equitable world. In 2006, Mastercard set up the Foundation as an independent organization with its own Board of Trustees and Executive team.

Established in 2006 by Mastercard International, the Mastercard Foundation, one of the world's largest private foundations, is an independent organization, operating separately from Mastercard. As an independent organization, the Foundation operates autonomously under the governance of its own Board of Directors. The Mastercard Foundation's mission is to advance education and financial inclusion as a path to poverty reduction, to support youth emancipation in Africa, and to contribute to a fairer and more equitable world. The Mastercard Foundation works with forward-thinking organizations to advance education and financial inclusion, enabling youth in Africa and Aboriginal youth in Canada to access decent and rewarding work.