On International Youth Day 2026, Kosmos Innovation Center marks a decade of turning youth potential into businesses, jobs and new possibilities for Ghana’s agricultural economy.
Across economies, young people share a common aspiration: the opportunity to build a meaningful future.
Yet the pathways to that future are not the same.
For a young graduate in Accra, it may mean turning an idea developed at university into a viable business. For one young woman, it may mean acquiring the skills, tools and confidence to start an enterprise. For a young person in a peri-urban community, it may mean discovering that agriculture is not simply a livelihood inherited from previous generations, but a sector in which technology, innovation and entrepreneurship can create a career. For another young person, it may mean moving from agricultural production to value addition and distribution channels to create more market linkages. For a young person with little or informal education, it may mean turning agricultural subsistence into a well-managed business venture that grows.
This is the context behind the United Nations’ International Youth Day 2026 theme, “Different Contexts, Common Aspirations.” It is a reminder that while young people may come from different circumstances, their ambitions are remarkably similar: to have access to opportunity, build livelihoods, participate meaningfully in their economies and shape their own futures.
In Ghana, the Kosmos Innovation Center (KIC) has spent the past decade working at precisely this intersection of aspiration and opportunity—using entrepreneurship and agriculture as vehicles for youth employment and economic transformation.
Changing the question young people ask about agriculture
For decades, agriculture has often been presented to young people primarily as farming.
KIC has worked to change that narrative.
The organization has sought to demonstrate that agriculture is an ecosystem of businesses, technologies, services and value chains—and that young people can participate not only as producers, but also as innovators, engineers, processors, logistics entrepreneurs, digital solution providers, marketers and business owners.
That shift in perception matters.
Ghana’s agricultural sector faces persistent challenges—from productivity and post-harvest losses to market access, mechanisation and value addition. But each challenge also represents an opportunity for a new generation of entrepreneurs to build businesses around solving real problems.
KIC’s model starts with this premise: young people do not simply need to be told that agriculture is an opportunity. They need to experience the opportunity.
Through programmes such as the AgriTech Challenge, Young Agripreneur Forum, Business Incubation, Women’s Entrepreneurship initiatives and Business Booster, KIC exposes young people to the realities of agricultural value chains and helps them identify commercial opportunities within them. Its programmes are designed to connect skills development with practical experience, mentorship, market exposure and enterprise development.
The result is a different proposition for young people: agriculture as a platform for innovation and enterprise, rather than agriculture as a fallback career.
From idea to impact
The journey from an idea to a job-creating enterprise is rarely linear.
A promising idea can fail because its founder does not understand the market. A technically sound product can struggle because it has not been designed around customer needs. A growing business can stall because its systems are weak or because the entrepreneur cannot access finance.
KIC’s approach is therefore deliberately built around the entire entrepreneurial journey.
It begins with exposure.
Young people are taken beyond the classroom and introduced to industry realities, agricultural value chains and market opportunities. Industry and market research tours allow participants to see how businesses operate, understand customer needs and identify gaps that can become opportunities.
The next step is capability.
Through coaching, mentoring and practical business development support, entrepreneurs are challenged to test assumptions, refine their business models and develop the capabilities required to operate commercially.
Then comes product development.
At KIC’s Center of Excellence in Kumasi, young entrepreneurs have access to specialised maker centres and technical infrastructure designed to help transform ideas into tangible, market-ready agricultural technologies and solutions.
And importantly, the journey includes access to financing and investment readiness.
KIC has provided seed funding and connected entrepreneurs to opportunities that can help move promising ideas beyond prototypes and into businesses capable of generating revenue and creating employment. Through KIC’s support, startups have received up to $1.8 million in seed funding.
This is the difference between training young people for employment and equipping young people to create employment.
From job seekers to job creators
Over the past decade, KIC’s work has increasingly demonstrated the multiplier effect of entrepreneurship.
A young entrepreneur who creates a business does not only create a job for themselves. As the enterprise grows, it can employ staff, purchase from farmers, engage suppliers, use logistics providers, create markets and generate opportunities for other young people.
That is why KIC measures impact not only by the number of people trained, but increasingly by what happens after training.
Since its establishment in 2016, 64,165 young people have been put to work, while more than 21,712 women have received entrepreneurship training and close to 91 start-ups have been incubated.
These numbers point to an important lesson for policymakers and development practitioners: youth employment interventions can have greater economic significance when they are designed around enterprise creation, market demand and sustained business growth, rather than training alone.
The objective is not simply to produce more entrepreneurs.
It is to produce entrepreneurs capable of building businesses that survive, scale and create value within their communities and across the wider economy.
The work does not end when the programme ends
One of the most important elements of KIC’s model is what happens after the initial programme.
Entrepreneurship is not a one-off intervention. Markets change. Products need to evolve. Businesses need stronger systems. Founders need new networks, new customers and new sources of capital.
KIC therefore continues to strengthen businesses through incubation, coaching, technical support, networking and exposure to opportunities.
Its Business Incubation programme, for example, is designed to prepare high-potential businesses for growth, scale and investor readiness, providing specialised coaching and mentorship, networking, infrastructure and access to technical expertise.
The recently launched KIC-Rabo Foundation Business Booster Programme extends this philosophy to 100 high-potential agricultural SMEs over a two-year period, supporting businesses across value chains including shea, cashew, soybeans, fonio, moringa, spices, sesame and other niche seeds, among others.
This continued exposure matters because sustainable impact is not created when an entrepreneur completes a programme.
It is created when the entrepreneur keeps growing.
Partnerships that make scale possible
KIC’s decade of work also demonstrates that youth employment at scale cannot be achieved by one institution working alone.
Its partnerships have helped create a broader ecosystem in which young entrepreneurs can access knowledge, networks, markets, finance and opportunities.
The Mastercard Foundation, through its partnership with KIC under the Initiative for Youth in Agricultural Transformation, has supported the expansion of KIC’s entrepreneurship model and its focus on creating work opportunities for young people across Ghana.
Kosmos Energy, as KIC’s founding partner, has been central to the organization’s decade-long journey of using innovation and entrepreneurship to create opportunities for young Ghanaians.
Partnerships with organizations including Rabo Foundation, AGRA and Cargill have further strengthened KIC’s ability to support entrepreneurs, build capabilities, expand access to productive resources and develop stronger agricultural value chains.
The significance of these partnerships extends beyond programme financing. They represent a shared recognition that youth employment, food systems transformation and entrepreneurship require collaboration across the private sector, development community, government, academia and the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
A decade of changing possibilities
In 2026, KIC is marking its 10th anniversary under the theme “A Decade of Youth Impact, Innovation and Agricultural Transformation.”
It is a milestone that offers both a reflection on what has been achieved and a question about what comes next.
Over ten years, the organization has evolved from a youth entrepreneurship initiative into a platform supporting a wider ecosystem of entrepreneurs and agricultural innovators.
Its experience suggests that changing the future of agriculture requires changing who sees themselves as part of that future.
The young person who once viewed agriculture as a sector with limited possibilities can become the founder of an agritech company.
The graduate who expected to compete for a job can become an employer.
The farmer can become a customer of technology. The agricultural challenge can become a business opportunity.
And an idea can become a company that creates jobs for others. That is the larger significance of KIC’s journey.
Different contexts. Common aspirations. Shared opportunity.
International Youth Day 2026 is ultimately a reminder that young people’s circumstances may differ, but their aspirations often converge.
They want the opportunity to work. They want to build. They want to innovate.
They want to participate in the economies and communities they call home.
And they want the agency to determine what their futures look like.
For Ghana, unlocking that potential will require more than preparing young people to enter existing labour markets. It will require creating the conditions in which they can build new markets, solve real problems and create work for others.
That is where entrepreneurship becomes more than a career pathway.
It becomes an economic strategy. And agriculture becomes more than a traditional sector.
It becomes a frontier for innovation, enterprise and employment.
As KIC enters its second decade, its central proposition remains as relevant as ever: when young people are given the skills, exposure, networks, resources and opportunity to turn ideas into viable businesses, they do not simply become participants in economic transformation—they become its drivers.
Ten years on, the journey from idea to impact continues.