Youth and the future of labor- and knowledge-intensive small-scale farming in West Africa under climate change and political instability

Debates on the future of smallholder farming in sub-Saharan Africa often interpret rural youth mobility and non-farm work as withdrawal from agriculture. This article examines how rural youth in coastal Guinea-Bissau engage with labour- and knowledge-intensive, climate-vulnerable mangrove swamp rice farming, and the conditions under which agriculture remains part of their imagined futures. We combine long-term ethnographic research, updated between 2020 and 2024, with a survey of 770 household heads in 13 villages, 98 biographical interviews, and conversations and group discussions involving 90 participants across 17 villages. Quantitative indicators were compared across household-head age groups, while qualitative material was analysed thematically and narratively. Results show that many young household heads remain engaged in agriculture while combining it with education, mobility and non-farm activities. Age differences in access to mangrove rice land are limited, although young household heads face higher dependency ratios and substantial rice deficits. Biographical evidence indicates that mobility and non-farm earnings often complement rather than replace agriculture. Nevertheless, climate-related risks, high labour costs, weak markets, political instability and inadequate rural services undermine its attractiveness. The study challenges binary portrayals of youth as either farmers or agricultural ‘exiters’ and shows that the future of mangrove rice farming depends on enabling diversified and mobile rural livelihoods.

Rural people’s movement away from agriculture as a sole or primary source of livelihood and wellbeing (e.g., Bryceson, 2002a), creates conditions unfavourable to the reproduction of agrarian and land-based livelihoods (e.g., Hebinck, 2018, p. 227), which has become a major concern in non-industrialized countries. Besides the alleged ageing of the farming population (e.g., FAO, 2014, p. 2; Rigg et al., 2020), this phenomenon may have multiple consequences, such as the exacerbation of poverty, reduced food security and sovereignty, and heightened socio-political instability (e.g., Entrena-Duran, 2015, p. 3).

In African countries where agriculture is still the main source of employment and its role in both national and local economies is dominant (e.g., Toulmin and Guèye, 2003; Ariyo and Mortimore, 2012), the future of smallholder agriculture has major policy relevance (e.g., Sumberg et al., 2012; Leavy and Hossain, 2014; Asciutti et al., 2016; Andersson Djurfeldt et al., 2019). The exodus from agriculture is partially related to youth unwillingness to stay attached to a livelihood demanding hard work, low returns and low social prestige (e.g., Ariyo and Mortimore, 2012, pp. 59–60; Tadele and Gella, 2012; Bilewicz and Bukraba-Rylska, 2021). Many aspire to desk jobs (e.g., Anyidoho et al., 2012a; Ariyo and Mortimore, 2012, p. 60), even when they do not have enough formal education, and sometimes prefer to accept urban casual work and consequently live in extreme precarity rather than remain in rural areas (Hansen and Vaa, 2013). In some contexts, scholars mention that young people are living in a “social moratorium” (Vigh, 2006), considering the major difficulties they face (mainly in accessing housing, land, capital, and getting married) to become independent adults. For those who wish to stay connected to agriculture, this state of “waithood” (Honwana, 2012; Oosterom, 2021) has been mainly attributed to gerontocratic control (e.g., Chauveau and Richards, 2008), increasing rural population densities (Chamberlin et al., 2021), land scarcity due to smallholder cash crop expansion (e.g., Temudo and Bivar, 2016; Chauveau and Richards, 2008), the transnational land rush (Chinsinga and Chasukwa, 2012; Cochrane and Andrews, 2021) and/or “green grabbing” (e.g., Temudo, 2012; Klute and Fernandes, 2014). More recently, climate change has further compounded these existing vulnerabilities (e.g., Ribot et al., 2020; Temudo et al., 2022).

Consequently, the combined effects of socio-economic and environmental pressures on African youth have been receiving a lot of academic and policy attention, mostly due to fears of crime, violent uprisings (e.g., Abbink and van Kessel, 2005; Scheffran and Battaglini, 2011; Afande et al., 2015, p. 16) and/or migration to the West (e.g., Gaibazzi, 2015, p. 1; Ribot et al., 2020). However, agriculture can develop a work ethic that contributes to the success of migrants (Gaibazzi, 2015), and mobility and non-farm work may also support agriculture when earnings and remittances finance education, hired labour and/or productive investments; at the same time, formal education and migration can also contribute to agricultural “deskilling” (e.g., Glover and Sumberg, 2025), especially when the transmission of endogenous knowledge and innovation skills are vital (e.g., Martiarena and Temudo, 2024). The relationship between youth emigration and agrarian change is therefore not unidirectional: mobility may weaken agricultural reproduction, but it may also enable households to maintain farming under multiple socio-economic, political and environmental stressors. Nonetheless, both the so-called crisis of youth and the way it relates to the future of agriculture and economic development may assume diverse forms in different settings (e.g., Okali and Sumberg, 2012, p. 44; Sumberg et al., 2012; Anyidoho et al., 2012a, p. 5; Berckmoes and White, 2014; Gaibazzi, 2015; Glover and Sumberg, 2020; Sumberg, 2021; Olaosebikan et al., 2022). The relevant question is therefore not simply whether young people are leaving agriculture, but how youth formal education, mobility and what Bryceson (2002b) called “multiplex livelihoods” reshape their attachment to farming and rural life. Thus, effective and adapted agricultural and rural development policies are crucial to create an enabling environment for youth to stay and thrive in rural areas when urban employment opportunities are scarce or null.

In this article, we focus on the rural context of Guinea-Bissau in which mangrove swamp rice (MSR) cultivation is practiced, as an example of low-external-inputs smallholder farming. MSR farming is an agro-silvo-fishing-pastoral system (unique to some West African countries but only thriving in Guinea-Bissau) that is knowledge-, time- and labour-intensive, enabling high agricultural yields provided that sufficient labour is mobilized together with well-distributed rains.The required endogenous knowledge includes the construction and maintenance of dikes, water and salinity management, the timing of ploughing and transplanting, and the selection of rice varieties adapted to particular field conditions (Martiarena and Temudo, 2024). Rainfall distribution irregularity and increasingly frequent extreme tidal events further increase production risks and both labour, knowledge and innovation requirements.

MSR farming provides most of the rice national production and helps to reduce the country’s staple food imports (e.g., Ecoutain, 1999; Temudo and Cabral, 2017). This cropping system relies on the combined work of women and men from different generations, as well as on mutual-aid and hired labour groups. Within this broader workforce, young people are particularly important to the long-term reproduction of agricultural labour, endogenous knowledge and rural institutions. The prolonged absence of young people may therefore contribute to the decline of this production system, by reducing both seasonal labour availability, intergenerational knowledge transmission and endogenous innovation (Martiarena and Temudo, 2024). Conversely, mobility and non-farm earnings may help sustain it by financing education, hired labour for ploughing and the rehabilitation of rice fields, and investments in livestock and land for cash-crop production. Considering that Guinea-Bissau has around 60% of its population under the age of 24 (UNSD, 2020), and although there is no national statistics indicating the proportion of young people engaged in farming, it can be stated that youth employment and the nexus between youth and agriculture are key for the country’s economic development, food security and political stability.

In this article, we examine both livelihood strategies and selected livelihood outcomes. Livelihood strategies refer to the combinations of agricultural, non-agricultural and mobility-related activities through which individuals and households mobilize labour, knowledge and other assets. Selected outcomes are approached through the dependency ratio, housing quality, possession of comfort goods and cattle, and the net rice balance, complemented by participants’ own accounts of wellbeing and a “good life”. These indicators do not provide a comprehensive measure of household welfare but allow selected dimensions of living conditions to be compared across household-head age groups. This approach also allows us to examine how labour and knowledge requirements, mobility and climate-related production risks shape rural livelihood strategies and their outcomes.

Following the approach suggested by Asciutti et al. (2016), the main questions that guided this research were: (1) How are rural young people in Guinea-Bissau coastal villages engaging with agriculture?1 (2) How is household-heads age grade associated with household labour availability, land access, livelihood diversification, and selected indicators of living conditions and rice self-sufficiency? (3) How do education, mobility and non-farm activities relate to young people’s engagement with agriculture and their pursuit of wellbeing? (4) How do young people describe the advantages or constraints involved in remaining in or returning to rural areas and agriculture? (5) Under what conditions do young farmers consider that agriculture and rural life can have a future?

We start with a methodological section, followed by the characterization of the study area. The next two sections will be based on (1) a survey of households (HHs) belonging to selected villages to study their demographic composition and characterize their livelihoods, and (2) biographies of and group discussions with youngsters, middle-aged and some elders to understand intergeneration relations, links between agricultural work and formal education, the local perceptions of agriculture and rural life, dreams and hopes, and the constraints faced by the youth who wish to stay in rural areas. We then reflect on the roots of youth rural exodus, which partially lie in enduring anti-smallholders’ and anti-rural policies. We conclude that many young men refuse to live in a dreams’ limbo, waiting for the best conditions to become a responsible, economic-independent adult; they fend for their lives using all the opportunities they can find in each specific moment and place, combining formal education with agriculture and other economic activities, and rural livelihoods with urban stays.

Research design and site selection

The study is rooted in ethnographic research, which implied long stays in and repeated visits of the second author to many coastal villages of different regions of the country since 1993. This prior knowledge was then updated and cross-checked between May 2020 and July 2024through a mixed-methods, multi-sited case study mostly focused on Balanta and Diola smallholders (main MSR producers and knowledge holders at present), but it also included Nalu and multi-ethnic villages. Research was conducted in 17 villages of the Cacheu, Oio and Tombali—the country’s regions where MSR cultivation is still dominant (see Figure 1). The study villages were then selected purposively rather than randomly to capture the diversity in ethnic groups, agroecologies, and access to market and transport conditions.

Participants selection and data collection in qualitative research

Qualitative research was conducted through informal individual conversations and group discussions (with 69 men and 21 women of all ages, including 34 mixed and same-gender groups), as well as biographical interviews conducted with 98 key informants of different ethnicities (aged between 19 and 71 years old, with a median age of 36, of which 34 were women). Participants were purposively selected through long-term field relationships and village contacts to include different ages, genders, ethnic backgrounds, educational trajectories, household status, migration experiences and levels of engagement with agriculture. This strategy aimed to include contrasting trajectories, including young people who had remained in the villages, returned after living elsewhere, and/or combined rural residence with periods of urban work engagement.

Household survey and quantitative variables2

Quantitative research involved a structured survey encompassing 770 household heads (HHHs) from 13 targeted villages. Household heads from all 3 age categories were deliberately included to support a comparative and intergenerational analysis of how labour availability, land access, livelihood diversification and selected living conditions vary across households headed by young, middle-aged and older individuals. The survey did not quantify the contribution of each activity to total household income as farmers do not have any form of accounting for either expenses or revenues.

Rather than drawing a probabilistic sample, the study sought to interview all identified household heads in each selected village. When a household head was temporarily absent, the researchers proceeded with the remaining households and attempted to return during the same or a subsequent field visit in 2020. Practically all HHHs were interviewed in most villages, with the lowest proportion being 63% of the HHHs in one village; the survey therefore provides broad coverage of household heads within the selected communities.

Because household headship is overwhelmingly male in Guinea-Bissau, the quantitative component primarily captures male-headed household trajectories and cannot represent the full diversity of women’s and non-household-head youths’ experiences. The qualitative component complements these household-level comparisons by providing direct evidence on individual youth trajectories, including those of young people who were not household heads yet.

Given the purposive selection of villages and the cross-sectional and observational design of the survey, the quantitative analysis identifies associations within the studied population but does not establish causal effects or support statistical generalization to Guinea-Bissau as a whole; however, it might be considered representative of coastal villages where MSR is dominant.

All interviews, group discussions and survey questionnaires were conducted in Guinea-Bissau Creole after informed consent was obtained from participants. Insofar as the research addressed local knowledge, the data-collection process also took into account the principles of the Nagoya Protocol, to which Guinea-Bissau is a Party.

Data analysis

Quantitative data were analysed descriptively by household-head age category: young (≤35 years), middle-aged (36–64 years) and old (≥65 years). Frequencies and proportions were calculated for categorical variables, while mean values were used to summarise household composition, dependency ratios, education, rice produced/purchased balance and livelihood-diversification indicators. Where possible, the number of observations and appropriate measures of dispersion are also reported to show the variability within each age category. No inferential significance tests were performed because the survey followed an attempted census of all household heads within purposively selected villages rather than a probabilistic sampling design. The quantitative findings therefore describe patterns and differences within the surveyed population, which might be considered representative of the diversity in MSR producing villages.

Qualitative material from field notes, interviews and group discussions was transcribed and organised through thematic and narrative analysis. The initial themes included rural-exodus push and pull factors, intergenerational relations, educational trajectories, perceptions of agriculture and rural life, mobility, and young people’s dreams and aspirations. Biographical trajectories were compared across age, gender, ethnicity, village and migration experiences. Qualitative interpretations were triangulated with long-term participant observation and the household-survey findings. Quotations originally expressed in Guinea-Bissau Creole were translated into English and selected to illustrate both recurrent patterns and contrasting trajectories.

The Results and Discussion are organised around the five research questions. Sections 4.1 and 4.2 draw primarily on the household survey, interpreted in conjunction with ethnographic evidence. Sections 4.3–4.5 draw mainly on biographical interviews, informal conversations and group discussions, supported where relevant by patterns identified in the household survey. This integrated organisation reflects the mixed-methods and intergenerational design of the study.

Youth presence and engagement in mangrove rice communities

Questioning the future of smallholder agriculture in a given context implies putting into test bold narratives (such as the one of FAO, 2014, p. 2) about population ageing through performing the analysis of household survey data (like the one conducted by Yeboah and Jayne, 2020, pp. 39–41). In the absence of any nationally representative survey data, these findings are limited to the 13 villages surveyed. Within the studied population, people under 25 years of age represented 63.36%, whereas those aged 65 or over—both active and dependent elders—represented 10.38% (Figure 2). Fewer than one-third of the elders had stopped working and were classified as dependent.

Although our lack of historical census data does not allow us to prove or disprove that “the average age of farmers is rising”, as Rigg (2006, p. 4) put it for the Global South as a whole, our testimonies and our own long-term observation lead us to assert that the reality in Guinea-Bissau’s MSR producing communities is highly complex and diversified (Figures 2, 3). Among the Diola, men used to marry when they were around twenty-five years old with younger women. Soon after Independence, both men and women started migrating to cities for studying, and most did not return anymore. This tendency has been particularly strong for coastal village-islands with no upland areas to produce cashews and/or palm trees to tap wine, and where many rice fields have been destroyed by sea-level rise and increasingly frequent extreme tide events. At present, both young men and women delay marriage, even after having children (who are sent to villages and fostered by grandparents until they reach school age), to continue an urban life usually combining formal education with poorly paid casual jobs. In the case of the Balanta early childbearing is also prevailing, but contrary to the Diola, girls usually get married soon after giving birth and most of them stop studying and engage in agriculture with their husbands. Until recently, Balanta men could only marry and establish their own households after performing manhood initiation rituals, which their elders generally delayed until they were over 40 years old (Temudo and Abrantes, 2015). Consequently, most households were headed by elders and had an important workforce. However, in the past two last decades, abrupt social changes have occurred; now, young men can marry and create their households much before initiation, and this ritual also takes place at a much younger age. This means that, contrary to the Diola, among the Balanta the number of young HHHs must have increased in recent times, although the total villages and thus HHs’ youth work force have also diminished due to migration to urban centres.

These contrasting trajectories show that the demographic presence of young people cannot by itself demonstrate either continued agricultural engagement or withdrawal. Among the Diola and Balanta, youth involvement in agriculture is shaped by different patterns of marriage, household formation, education, seasonal mobility and access to agricultural resources.

Age-grade patterns in household labour, living conditions, land access and activity diversification

To examine how household circumstances vary across life-course positions, we compared households headed by young (≤35 years), middle-aged (36–64 years) and old (≥65 years) individuals in terms of household composition and labour availability, educational attainment, selected living conditions, reliance on produced vs. purchased rice, land access and activities’ diversification.

As illustrated in Figure 3, middle-aged household heads (HHHs) are the most represented (52.1%), followed by elder HHHs (26.7%) and young HHHs (21.2%). Elder HHHs have fewer family members on average (6.74 individuals per household), yet they exhibit a higher percentage of active family members (65.7%). This is consistent with their lower dependency ratio (52.88), indicating that this age category experiences less economic and food security pressure compared to HHHs in other age categories (see Figure 4). In contrast, young HHHs face greater pressure, as evidenced by the highest dependency ratio (93.05). They have an average of 7.47 members per household, with only 55.8% being active members. Lastlyouth abandoning agriculturey, middle-aged HHHs have the largest families (8.35 family members per household), with 60.9% being active members. They have the second-highest average dependency ratio (74.59) among the three age categories.

Figure 4 shows that young household heads had the highest average educational attainment, with 5.97 years of formal education, followed by middle-aged household heads with 4.35 years and old household heads with 0.94 years. Many middle-aged household heads began school after the age of ten, and their educational trajectories were also interrupted by repeated teachers’ strikes. Old household heads had the lowest proportion of tin-roofed houses (38%) and of at least one of the selected comfort goods (25%). However, they had the least negative mean net rice balance (−213.65 kg), which coincides with their lower dependency ratio. The mean net rice balance was negative in all three age categories, indicating reliance, on average, on rice purchased, borrowed or obtained in exchange for raw cashew nuts. This indicator should not be interpreted as a comprehensive measure of food insecurity because it does not measure total food production, consumption, dietary diversity or seasonal food shortages; however, even when other food is available, a meal without rice is considered a snack.

Middle-aged household heads had a more negative mean net rice balance than young household heads (−313.7 versus −292.6 kg) and a lower proportion of the selected comfort goods (34%), but they have a slightly higher proportion of tin-roofed houses (53% versus 51%) and of cattle (49% versus 37%). The aim to accumulate in cattle along the HH cycle is curtailed by the higher commitment of old HHHs to use it in the morning ceremonies of relatives. These descriptive patterns suggest differences in household assets and investment priorities across age categories, but the cross-sectional data does not establish the causes of these differences.

All household heads have inherited most of their mangrove swamp rice fields, according to our survey data. The ones that have not enough lowlands belong to descent groups that arrived in the village after almost all land had been divided; thus, both young and old HHHs are similarly affected by land scarcity. Among the land inherited, one may receive mangroves to open new plots, plots that had been abandoned and whose dikes need rebuilding, and/or mortgaged plots that can be redeemed through paying the debt. Figure 5 shows diverse forms of access to MSR paddies besides inherited and new/rebuilt plots, which reveal a minor importance and a scarce difference among age groups; these include plots offered by, borrowed to or mortgaged (in exchange of a cow, a pig, rice or, less frequently, cash) by other farmers. The same does not apply to upland ownership and possession of a cashew orchard. As previously said, the cashew boom resulted in an uneven distribution of upland among HHHs of different villages and sometimes of the same village. The older men possessing orchards see them as a kind of retirement pension, and frequently only after their death is an orchard divided among sons. Available and financially accessible land for orchards is usually located in faraway regions, and young men need to have the demographic and economic conditions to create a multi-sited HH to be able to combine MSR cultivation with upland crops (mostly cashews and some lemon trees, and less frequently peanuts and other minor crops). This may help to explain the higher concentration of orchards among the middle-aged HHHs, while the lowest percentage found among elders (see Figure 5 and Table 1, which confirms these results through the average amount of raw cashew nuts sold) illustrates their initial reduced interest in sizing upland for creating an orchard. In sum, as highlighted by Chamberlin et al. (2021, p. 59), broad, uncontextualized assertions that the young face reduced access to land can be misleading (cf, Vigh, 2006, for the case of Guinea-Bissau).

Household economic strategies combine agricultural, off-farm agricultural and non-agricultural activities, as reported in other African settings (e.g., Rigg, 2006, p. 4; Berckmoes and White, 2014, pp. 194–195; Mwaura, 2017, pp. 52–63; Rigg et al., 2020, p. 306; Flynn and Sumberg, 2021, p. 45; LaRue et al., 2021, p. 888). The unweighted activity-diversity indicators record the number of reported activities or species in each category; they do not measure the amount of labour, production or income associated with those activities, as farmers were unable to provide these data. The resulting patterns show lower diversification among older household heads, whereas differences between young and middle-aged household heads are comparatively limited (Table 2).

Since the interviewees do not have any type of accounting, the survey recorded participation in different activities rather than their monetary contribution to total household income; thus, it cannot determine whether the balance of household income has shifted from farm to non-farm sources. Nevertheless, both the survey and ethnographic evidence show that agricultural activities remain central to household consumption and to the generation of resources used for other livelihood activities.

Mobility, non-farm work and education within agricultural livelihoods

The survey indicates that participation in casual labour and raw cashew nuts trading is more prevalent among young household heads than among middle-aged and older household heads (Table 1). Once again, these participation rates do not measure the income generated by each activity or demonstrate withdrawal from agriculture. However, biographical and ethnographic evidence helps explain how education, mobility and non-farm earnings are combined with farming and how they contribute to young people’s pursuit of wellbeing.

Another important indication of the continued importance of agriculture and natural resources in household livelihoods is rooted in the observation that most farmers consume the crops they produce, the wild products they collect and the aquatic resources they harvest. Hunting is now rare due to the scarcity of wild animals following the conversion of most forests into orchards. As previously said, all three age categories rely, to varying degrees, on rice obtained outside the household. However, some of it is obtained directly from traders in exchange for raw cashew nuts (RCN) or purchased with its revenues and/or from other agricultural products, livestock, fish and collected wild fruits. Although income from casual or, more rarely, salaried employment might also contribute, particularly among younger household heads, the ethnographic evidence suggests that these earnings are frequently used for education, healthcare, housing, equipment and other expenses.

Table 1 helps to specify how participation in selected complementary activities varies across household-head age categories and confirms that middle-aged HHHs are the ones more involved in RCNs production. Casual labour was more prevalent among young HHHs (35%) than among middle-aged (17%) and old HHHs (5%). Participation in RCN trading followed a similar pattern, involving 19% of young, 10% of middle-aged and 3% of old household heads. During the cashew harvesting period, this activity commonly involves working as a middleman in the purchase of RCNs for larger merchants. It requires physical energy and basic numeracy and accounting skills, which may partly explain its greater prevalence among younger household heads. Few farmers are primary-school teachers, and salaried employment remained uncommon in all age categories. Retailing was slightly more prevalent among middle-aged HHHs (6%) than among young (4%) or old HHHs (3%). It can provide regular profits when traders are able to avoid accumulating unpaid credit extended to relatives and neighbours and can adequately manage their accounts—skills that are both higher among middle-aged HHHs. The ethnographic material provides further detail on how agricultural and non-agricultural activities are combined and on the purposes for which the resulting income is used.

Livestock raising could be a good source of cash income if livestock mortality and theft were reduced, particularly among the Balanta. Even though few veterinary services exist, either public or private, and access to vaccines is scarce, a few young farmers are learning how to vaccinate cattle. Most years, farmers’ savings in chickens, pigs, goats, and cattle are decimated by epidemics, which constitutes a major economic setback. Pigs are compulsory in many ceremonies and have been traditionally used by HHHs to hire labour groups, while unmarried young people increasingly use the proceeds from their sale to pay school fees and cloth. The Diola possess few heads of cattle, and they frequently belong to the descent group and are destined to ceremonies. The Balanta used to accumulate cattle to be slaughtered in mourning ceremonies, but at present many elders accept to sell some of them to buy aluminum sheets for the roof of a new house, to buy rice in years of food scarcity and to help their sons to pay for higher education or to start a business. However, very few (if any) HHHs dare to challenge social norms and put cattle into economic circulation by selling it when reaches maturity, buy a calf to raise and use the rest of the money to invest in other business opportunities or improve their HH wellbeing.

Since the 1990s, demand for quality fish in urban and international markets has increased and mangrove fishing has grown in economic importance for both women and men in many coastal villages (e.g., Keleman et al., 2024). Although fishing was not a traditional activity for most Balanta men—contrary to Diola men of coastal village-islands in the Cacheu region—some learned the necessary skills, taking advantage of this new economic opportunity.

Young farmers’ engagement in non-agricultural activities depends on available opportunities but also on their work capacity and their innovative, creative and/or risk-prone attitude. As stated by Berckmoes and White (2014, pp. 194–195) for the case of Burundi, rural Bissau-Guinean youth engaged in non-farm income-generating activities are still committed to farming as these activities are meant to complement and, sometimes, to enable farming (e.g., when they provide income for hiring labour groups or are used to buy rice paddies or land for an orchard). Non-farm income-generating activities mainly consist of casual jobs, performed during the dry season and are mostly aimed at facing new needs (tin roofs, education and health expenses, solar panels, furniture, cloth and other comfort goods; see Figure 4). This pattern is particularly common among young people who previously lived in urban areas to work or study and who continue to return to cities during the dry season to work in construction (see Table 1); the kind of “seasonal rural-urban circulation” also observed in The Gambia by Gaibazzi (2015, p. 22).

Nowadays, both elders and young farmers in Guinea-Bissau do not necessarily see agriculture as opposed to formal education. On the contrary, some of the most successfully educated were the ones who used agriculture to finance their studies and, after getting a degree as teachers, returned to their village combining a salaried job, with trade and/or agriculture (for the whole Sub-Saharan Africa, see Crossouard et al., 2021). Household heads employed as primary-school teachers illustrate particularly well that formal education and salaried employment do not necessarily result in the abandonment of agriculture or rural life.

“I wanted to be a civil engineer, but I didn't have well-placed relatives who could support me in getting a scholarship to go abroad. I returned to the village [after finishing high school] and became a teacher, making direct contracts with communities that didn't have a teacher. Later, I went back to study and got a degree as a teacher, but I returned to my village. I have a better life than those who stayed in the city because I have food, livestock, a shop, my teacher's salary, and I’m also a mason and a carpenter. I have a good, cemented house, a plasma TV and a solar panel and I bought land for a big orchard” (Balanta married man aged 42).

“We see that the people who studied the most are [also] the ones who value agriculture the most” (young Balanta married man aged 34).

These accounts illustrate how education and salaried or non-farm employment may be incorporated into, rather than substitute, an agricultural livelihood. While some prefer to remain in cities and become detached from agriculture, others purchase land to establish an orchard—where they can work periodically or hire others to perform agricultural tasks—or return to their home villages. Non-farm activities have become increasingly important to rural livelihoods because the cash needs have risen with modernisation. Their growing importance therefore reflects not only decreasing harvests (mostly due to climate change) and agricultural returns (caused by unfavorable market conditions), but also changing needs and aspirations associated with education, healthcare, housing and new consumer goods.

The qualitative evidence does not reveal a simple opposition between parents’ ambitions and young people’s aspirations regarding education and agricultural work. While parents generally expressed a strong interest in enabling their children to complete professional or university education, some young women and men voluntarily discontinued their studies. This is illustrated by the contrasting trajectories within Júlio’s household. Júlio is now 62 years old and only started to study at the age of 11 years. After finishing the 6th grade in 2002, he was hired as a primary teacher back in his village. His dream was to become a doctor, but he had no family in Bissau where to stay. Eleven years later, after marrying, he enrolled again in secondary school (while teaching and farming too) and graduated in 2019. His son aged 24, stopped studying four years ago when he finished 10th grade, because he wanted to hang out with peers (fasi juventundade in Kriol) that also stopped studying. Since then, he has worked in his father’s fields. Julio’s daughter is now 27 years old and finished studying after getting pregnant when she was twenty. Although her former boyfriend refused to marry her, she decided to stop studying contrary to her father’s will. Now she is pregnant again with another boyfriend who will marry her. None of her village female friends graduated from secondary school. These trajectories show that parental preferences alone do not determine whether young people continue studying or engage in agriculture; peer relations, pregnancy, marriage, household responsibilities and individual choices also play important roles.

As stated by Ariyo and Mortimore (2012, p. 59; see also Gaibazzi, 2015), “farming is not a closed system”, and mobility has long been an intrinsic component of rural life, either through short-term migration or permanent relocation to other rural or urban areas. However, mobility has increased and taken new forms, with many households and livelihoods becoming multi-sited (see also Rigg, 2006, p. 4). In sum, socio-cultural transformations relate to livelihood changes in novel forms (Rigg, 2006, p. 4), which also reflect the effects of climate change and the increasing penetration of capitalism into rural societies. The evidence presented here nevertheless shows that mobility and non-farm work cannot automatically be interpreted as withdrawal from agriculture.

Taken together, these findings show that formal education, mobility and non-farm activities do not have a unidirectional relationship with agricultural engagement. Prolonged absences may reduce household labour availability and interrupt agricultural knowledge transmission, while earnings from construction, trade, fishing or salaried employment may finance education, hired labour, rice-field rehabilitation, livestock and orchards. For many participants, agriculture, education and non-farm work form part of a single, diversified and sometimes multi-sited livelihood strategy.

Remaining or returning: choice, constraint and intergenerational relations

The qualitative material shows that remaining in or returning to rural areas cannot be reduced to either free choice or a lack of alternatives. Such trajectories are embedded in family obligations, intergenerational authority, village institutions, access to education and employment, and individual assessments of the relative advantages of rural and urban life.

“Do you know why young people are not fully committed [to agriculture]? It is because of their imagination. In today's world, some people dream of things that are out of their reach. But why wouldn’t you be able to achieve them? You can, but not if you just sit around! For example, some migrate to pursue their education. They fight for their future and it's very important! But those of us who stay at home, if we don't go to school or to work, we end up just sitting around every morning with our arms crossed…” (young married man, aged 29).

The above statement belongs to a young Balanta man, who dreamed to become a teacher. However, he started studying late and was forced to stop and accept the leadership of the household of his deceased uncle (who was raising him after the death of his parents), when he just had finished the seventh grade and felt totally unprepared to become a HHH. Until then, and similarly to many others that faced the same fate, he was paying for his studies through on- and off-farm agricultural activities and livestock raising. He inherited a totally unstructured household, and his priority was to achieve rice self-sufficiency for his large family. To improve the economic situation of the HH, he started to produce peanuts and to raise chicken for selling; with the income he bought some basic products to start doing small trade, but his business went bankrupt twice due to unpaid loans. Contrary to traditional customs and fears of defamation of character, he decided to force the young men who were also raised by his uncle, but did not share his work ethics, to create a separate household. Then he repaired the dikes and increased the area of his rice fields to put an end to food insecurity; later, he built a good tin-roofed house and a (well-provisioned) shop where he no longer grants loans. He still regrets not having been able to study, and his present dream is to pay university fees for all his children and to buy a car. In his statement he clearly distinguishes between realistic imagination and imagination that can be better understood as “fantasy (…) thoughts divorced from projects and actions” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 7). Thus, he was able to shift from one realistic dream to another through hard work, planning, and persistency to achieve a goal in life, while casting his own long-abandoned dreams towards his children. His trajectory illustrates the interaction between constraint and agency. He did not choose to abandon school or to assume responsibility for his uncle’s household, but he subsequently mobilised agriculture, livestock raising and trade to overcome food insecurity and reshape his aspirations for himself and his children. In Gaibazzi (2015, p. 22) words, he refused his younger relatives’ attitude of “just sitting” being able to find a “respectable mode of sitting” as a farmer, household head and villager.

This interaction between constraint and agency is historically embedded in changing intergenerational relations and in the institutions through which elders and young people negotiate education, agricultural work and household responsibilities. Our long-term ethnographic evidence (see also Gable, 2000; Temudo and Abrantes, 2015), shows how youth actively challenged gerontocratic authority and restrictive customs, seeking to modernise rural life and make it more appealing. In youth quest for freedom, access to education—which the elders viewed as in conflict with the maintenance of a rural and agricultural lifeworld—was a major point of contention. However, Balanta youth would not have fully succeeded without the help of many of their elders who, after their party’s leader Kumba Yalá was elected President of the country in 1999 (Temudo, 2009), started organizing regional and even national meetings to induce major social and cultural changes in Balanta society. They believed these transformations were necessary to address their continuing stigmatization and political and social marginalization in the post-colony. In the very words of one of these elders:

“If you do not go to school, even if it's daylight you'll walk as if it is night. You don't know where you're going” (Balanta elder aged around 70 years old).

At present, many parents no longer compel their children to return to the village during the rainy season, hoping instead that they will be able to progress in their studies and will send them remittances when they’ll get a good job.

The case of Diola youth is striking in respect to the way they collectively organized, village after village, to “discipline” their elders to accept post-Independence state’s directives to increase national adherence to formal education. Feeling backed by the state, the youth denounced their elders’ anti-school attitude to state authorities; these were beaten and sometimes even imprisoned, and the young got free to engage in school. Although this rupture triggered a major youth exodus due to lack of rural schools, the elders are still able to control youth’s labour force during the rainy season (coincident with school holidays); many of those who are full employed do not return for ploughing and planting but send money to their family to hire labour groups. Village idleness is still not easily allowed and even peers exert social control through open criticism, marginalization (mainly exclusion from participation in youth feasts), and cash fines.

In sum, as Glover and Sumberg (2020, p. 3) put it, inter-generational relations may be “both enabling and constraining, and laden with power” (see also Berckmoes and White, 2014, p. 91). However, the importance of local institutions, such as traditional authorities, age groups and extended family networks, in broadening or constraining the “opportunity space” (Sumberg et al., 2012, p. 5), strengthening or eroding social cohesion and fostering the willingness to stay or return to rural areas and engage in agriculture as a primary or complementary activity, has been a minor research topic. As we mentioned above, elders can play a major role in youth decision-making by creating an attractive/repelling environment for them to stay in the villages.

In Malafu, the village traditional authority induced major changes in village life since around twenty years ago, and “to this day, in our village, the elders have (words of) advice for the young” (young Balanta married man aged 29). In the words of another young man:

“The community paid for a motorcycle and fuel for two of us study in Mansoa and become the first primary teachers here (…) Our elders have a plan for [life in] Malafu to become more attractive than the city. This is what makes us different [from other villages]” (Balanta married man aged 40).

In Sugun, one of the elders was persistently accused of witchcraft by his peers for having good harvests and lots of cattle, wives and children. He was the first to sell cattle to roof his house and the one of his married children with aluminum sheets; one of whom stated:

“My father helped me to migrate to The Gambia to learn English and to study to become a teacher because he wanted his children to be modern” (young Balanta married man aged 35).

Likewise, as illustrated by Gable (2000), the collective dynamics of the youth that decided or were forced to stay “bush bound” (Gaibazzi, 2015) is decisive for the improvement of village life. This is the case for Elalab village (see Figure 1), where some young men who were finishing secondary school and aimed to enter university returned during the civil war and decided to stay as primary teachers. Later, they started to distinguish themselves as brokers in relation to the state and external development projects and today their “voice is more ‘heard’ [taken into account] than the one of the elders, exception made in relation to village ritual life” (Diola married man aged 43). At present, they are organizing meetings to convince the young that have poorly paid jobs in urban areas that “there’s no shame in returning to the village, where they can have a much better life” (Diola married men aged 33 and 43).

In Elia, the ones that stayed in the village created an association with migrants to raise money to improve village infrastructures. In Sugun, they organize regular gatherings among the youth to stop witchcraft and evil eye accusations by the idle ones towards the hard-working young and older inhabitants that have good harvests, livestock, better houses and some comfort goods (e.g., solar panels, television, etc.). In Caiquenem, faced with food insecurity, some educated young HHHs were able to convince all villagers to rebuild the dikes, increase their MSR fields’ area and to reintroduce mutual aid, putting an end to the increasing costs with labour groups.

These cases show that remaining in a village is not merely an individual decision: collective organisation, intergenerational relations and the capacity of local institutions to improve agricultural and social conditions can expand or restrict the options available to young people.

However, the extended family and even neighbours may also prevent individual economic progress, either by witchcraft accusations or by pressing for loans and gifts when a man starts to show any evidence of economic welfare. This “nightmare egalitarianism” (Gable, 1997) is an important factor that drives young people to assume that they can only achieve a good life through (either internal or international) migration. The ability to deal with coercive situations, avoiding the need to migrate, will then depend on the individual ingenuity of farmers to evade gift obligations by hiding their wealth in the village and secretly investing elsewhere (e.g., buying an orchard or urban land to build a good house either for renting or where their children can live while studying). Other common strategies involve keeping capital in constant circulation (maximizing profits also) or using a trusted person—typically a major merchant or a female trader—as a secure depositary (usually without interest payments).

For those who discontinue their studies and return to their villages but become idle, exception made for the Diola, rules enforcing family and collective work are softening, individual laziness is seldom openly criticized and few dare to expel the ones that do not contribute to the common good but share the benefits of their family’s hard work.

“Our culture doesn't help, because if a relative comes and stays at our house we can't force them to work, since [the person] will ruin our name (…) most people don't see that the one that doesn't work is wrong and they will blame the one that has a better economic condition for denying [to provide for] his relatives [who refuse to work]” (Balanta married man aged 37).

“My younger brother attends school in Bissau, but his girlfriend got pregnant and he brought her home. Now I must produce [more] rice to send to him and his wife, but he doesn't come here to work. I’m not happy about it, but I have no choice” (Balanta married man aged 36).

As reported for other African countries (e.g., Andersson Djurfeldt et al., 2019; Thorsen and Yeboah, 2021), children and youth are often stimulated to develop their own economic activities, so they can use the money to buy, e.g., fashion cloth, to spend with their peers and even to pay for school fees when their parents face economic hardships or when they want to show-off their adulthood skills. The reduced number of secondary schools in rural areas implies a halt in the agricultural knowledge and working ethos transmission process that eventually ends up making agricultural labour unpleasant (see also White, 2020, pp. 73–80). For many who stopped studying, the return to village life and agriculture is a last resort career choice to which one is forced to turn to when there are no other livelihood options (see also Shackleton et al., 2019, pp. 694–695) and no urban relatives can provide shelter and food. Many prefer to stay in the city and to live in “waithood” by personal decision, enjoying youthhood (juventundade in Kriol) under their own terms.

“There are young people who stay in the city without studying or working because they don’t like agriculture and don’t want responsibilities. Laziness, it’s a worldwide problem” (young Diola married man aged 33).

“Some go to cities to study because there are no schools [in the countryside], but others go because of laziness. They don't want to do hard work” (Balanta married man aged 42).

These statements should be understood as participants’ moral evaluations of work, responsibility and adulthood rather than as an objective classification of young people’s behaviour. They nevertheless reveal how remaining in the city without studying or securing employment is perceived and debated within rural communities.

Similarly to what has been mentioned for other contexts (e.g., Potts, 2006; Langevang and Gough, 2009; Tadele and Gella, 2012; Berckmoes and White, 2014; Olaosebikan et al., 2022), some of the (now) mature HHHs voluntarily returned to their village of origin either because they wanted to contribute to their community development or they saw the economic advantages of engaging with agriculture and living in rural areas. Others, however, were forced to abandon their urban lives even if they would have preferred to stay, after the death or prolonged illness of their father (or any other relative head of the native household, such as an elder brother or an uncle) or the “call of the land [spirits]” (txon txaman in Kriol).

“The city has everything ‘like a tidy house’: hospitals, electricity, TV, schools, etc. But you can only be happy there if you have a good salary to pay for everything. If you don't have it, it's better to come back to the village” (Balanta married man aged 42).

“My family called me back to the village. I would like to be in Bissau because I have a profession in construction; but if that's not the case and if someone doesn't have a job, I don't recommend staying in Bissau. When you live in the village, you can live your life normally (…) You don't need to worry about food” (Balanta married man aged 36).

These accounts illustrate that the same return may combine obligation and opportunity. Family responsibilities may trigger the decision to return, while access to food, land and a house may subsequently make rural life preferable to precarious urban employment.

Many young men stay “bush bound” but not “stuck in waithood”, even though many had been eager to travel abroad for money and experience. Participants increasingly described irregular migration routes as dangerous and expensive, while accounts from migrants also drew attention to the economic and social difficulties of living abroad. These experiences led some young people to reassess the relative advantages of migration and rural life.

“I had a dream to migrate to Portugal or Brazil, but I became aware of the difficulties to get the documents and of the reality of life abroad; thus, I decided to stay and to get a degree in English [to become a teacher]” (Balanta married young man aged 26).

“Some former high school colleagues ask me how can I live in the ‘dark’, but I think I have the same access to information and a better life in the village. Anyway, I never wanted to emigrate, and my dream was to become a teacher” (Diola married man aged 43).

Taken together, these trajectories reveal a continuum between choice and constraint rather than two mutually exclusive situations. Young people exercise agency by combining farming, education, mobility and non-farm work, but their options are conditioned by family responsibilities, intergenerational relations, village institutions and access to urban employment. Remaining in or returning to a rural area may therefore begin as an obligation, become an economic strategy or reflect a preference for rural life; conversely, urban residence may express a choice while also involving prolonged insecurity and limited opportunities.

Conditions for the future of agriculture and rural life

Across interviews and group discussions, participants consistently identified a combination of infrastructural, institutional and market conditions required for agriculture and rural life to remain attractive to younger generations. Similarly to what was stated by Crossouard et al. (2022, p. 227) in relation to Nigeria, many young farmers in Guinea-Bissau cannot imagine a future in which no one is devoted to agriculture “because we all need to eat, and the price of food is increasing steadily”. Although the young believe that at least some of them would always stay attached to agriculture, the elders fear a crisis of social reproduction due to the combined effects of climate change and youth exodus for studying and working (see video at YouTube3). Even though farmers trust in the state and the political elite is low, they have a clear idea of the conditions needed for agriculture and rural-based livelihoods be attractive to the new generations of educated young men and women (for other countries, see Leavy and Houssain, 2014).

“We long for money and we think about going to Europe, but if there were here schools and hospitals, wells, electricity, and good roads for our products to be sold, we wouldn’t have dreams of going to Europe or the city. Here, we can have a better economic condition [because there is no need to buy food, rent a house, pay for water, etc.]” (Balanta young married man aged 34).

“Previously, young people despised agriculture, but now they see that many who went to the city have returned. Even when you live in Bissau, if during the rain you come to do agriculture your life will improve, because you don't have to buy food. This year many young people who were in the city returned to plough. Now they see that after work, we wash ourselves, dress well and drink green tea. When we go to the city, we dress well, equal or better than those who live there” (Balanta married man aged 35).

These accounts indicate that the attractiveness of agriculture is evaluated relationally. Interviewees compare the food, land and relative autonomy available in rural areas with the costs and insecurity of urban life, while also comparing the availability of services, infrastructure and entertainment in the city with their limited provision in villages. Difficulties in selling agricultural products were particularly prominent in these accounts. Participants connected low or uncertain returns from agriculture to poor roads, insufficient transport, limited access to credit and the scarcity of traders willing to purchase products in remote villages. Interviewees also emphasised that agricultural support alone would be insufficient. They associated an attractive rural future with healthcare, education, potable water, electricity, vocational training and opportunities for leisure and social life.

“Politicians don't ‘see’ us and don't even try to ‘see’ us because we work but we have difficulty in selling our products and there are no transports, no roads and no support in cash [credit] to pay for work, nor traders who come to buy our products here”. (young Balanta married man aged 30).

“Politicians should provide [agricultural] machines, access to health, education, transport, potable water and should create professional training centers [in rural areas]. The city has ‘environment’ [entertainments]. Here there are no nightclubs, no good bars and no electricity” (young Balanta married man aged 26).

“We need rural training centres and factories” (Nalu married man aged 38).

The reference to vocational training and factories reflects an interest not only in increasing agricultural production but also in creating rural employment and retaining more value through local processing. Participants therefore situated the future of agriculture within a broader process of rural development rather than treating farming as an isolated sector.

During a group discussion with young men about the conditions needed for the youth to stay in rural areas and be attached to agriculture, many mentioned that the country "does not have a state"; suddenly, one of them stated vehemently:

"We do have a state! What we do not have are state men! Most of our politicians are traders and they only care about their own interests and the interests of their families and friends (…) In one day they become rich; even the ones that had nothing before [after getting power positions]! They don’t want agriculture to develop, because this would ruin their profits [with food imports]" (Balanta married man aged 40).

Another one added: “After Independence, our politicians started to send their children to study abroad and when there are scholarships, they keep them for their own relatives and friends. That’s why they don’t care about the country’s education system” (young Balanta married man aged 31).

The above statements represent participants’ perceptions of the political elite priorities and state accountability. They demonstrate that interviewees connect the limited attractiveness of agriculture not only to production constraints but also to governance, public investment and the perceived political economy of food imports.

As underlined by Olaosebikan et al. (2022, p. 2) “Many rural young people have not turned their back on agriculture as a present livelihood option and imagined future (…) While most engage in agriculture in one way or another, it is neither correct nor helpful to assume they are simply or even primarily ‘farmers’ or stuck in ‘waithood’”. Like what was reported by Locke and te Lintelo (2012) for the case of Zambians, many rural male youngsters in coastal Guinea-Bissau villages are also “waiting” for opportunities and “working towards” living well. In the “imagined futures” (see Yeboah et al., 2021) of some, agriculture and education are intrinsically combined for achieving a good life, but they want the state and donors to invest in rural areas and to create better market conditions for their products.

“We have to show our children where the genesis of work [agriculture] lies” (young Balanta married man aged 33).

“My first dream was medicine, but recently I changed to Agronomy because I saw that the government abandoned agriculture, and we need to put agriculture in our hearts” (Diola young married man aged 26).

This study offers a nuanced, contextualized understanding of rural youth and their perspectives on the future, examining their aspirations, and contrasting unrealistic dreams with realistic success stories of farmers embracing an agrarian ethos and linking “the plough and the pen” (Temudo and Abrantes, 2015). To this aim, we looked at the lives of the “bush bound” youth (Gaibazzi, 2015), in many villages of coastal Guinea-Bissau where the labour-intensive MSR cultivation is practiced, studying the demographic relevance of young HHs, their livelihoods and dreams and hopes, and their visions about the future of agriculture. Our approach considered power relations and resource control across generations and tries to reveal the impact of socio-environmental change, mobility and globalization in the lifeworlds of rural youth (see also Wyn and White, 1997). The conclusions reveal that agriculture per se is no longer sufficient for rural youth to fulfil their aspirations for a better life. This is attributed to climate change, increasing agricultural labour costs, market malfunctioning, inadequate provision of education and health services by the state in rural areas, and rising cash needs to purchase new consumer goods. However, many young men refuse to live in a dreams’ limbo—a “social moratorium” (Vigh, 2006)—waiting for the best conditions to become a responsible, economic-independent adult; they fend for their lives using all the opportunities they can find in each specific moment and place. In this sense, youth rural exodus and “deagrarianization” did not led to poverty, food insecurity and social instability; on the contrary, a diverse livelihood portfolio has been used by some young and (at present) middle-aged HHHs to invest in both subsistence and cash crop production together with non-agricultural activities to improve their rural living conditions. Considering the increasing costs of food, agriculture is still perceived as a source of wellbeing providing self-sustenance and funding other activities (namely education and trade).

In the case of MSR household heads of Guinea-Bissau, the abandonment of agriculture is also a challenge to “the very essence of local identity” (Shackleton et al., 2019, p. 696), as the opening statements illustrate. All the ones that successfully finished their studies and returned to rural areas have combined education and agricultural work since childhood (see also Crossouard et al., 2021, pp. 220–221); this might have increased both their “agricultural ethos” and their capacity to successfully achieve their non-agricultural goals, similarly to what Gaibazzi (2015) observed among the Soninke of The Gambia. As stated by LaRue et al. (2021, pp. 887–888) we need to move beyond the dichotomic view of youth relation to agriculture and acknowledge that in many contexts some aspire to a “mixed livelihood” (see also Anyidoho et al., 2012b; Mwaura, 2017, p. 52; McCarthy, 2020; White, 2020, p. 15; Yeboah et al., 2021) in which agriculture is a source of food and income, and a social safety net in a context of political instability and market malfunctioning.

Finally, if we are to believe that smallholder agriculture can be a driver of economic development in Sub-Saharan African countries, we must rely on investigating together with farmers the conditions in which the educated rural youth find rural life and agriculture attractive, either as a primary occupation or a complementary source of income and/or welfare (see White, 2020; Sumberg et al., 2021, p. 4). Then, the example of the Malmon project can help to think about how we can train and build the skills of rural educated young people and raise their self-esteem as full- or part-time farmers to create a grassroots AKIS and develop the rural economy in political unstable countries with weak formal R4D institutions.