Meet the agri-influencers drawing African youth to farming

Alex Afari’s TikTok feed is a field of green. The 35-year-old agronomist posts daily from his five-acre farm in Ghana’s Accra region, doling out advice and inspiration on everything from drip irrigation for cocoyam plants (“coming up nicely”) to trellising techniques (“farming is fun when you know what to do”).  

Afari is gaining an audience on Facebook, where he has about 108,000 followers, as well as TikTok and LinkedIn. He’s among a new crop of young African farmers transforming agriculture on the continent through social media, turning platforms into tools that are helping farmers improve crop yields, find new markets, boost their incomes, and build partnerships to solve agriculture problems in Africa.

Afari, who cofounded a consulting firm on greenhouse farming called Defarmercist, showcases farming through a business lens. “There is no easy crop … only well-planned farming,” he wrote on Facebook last month. His posts explore how to navigate worsening climate change shocks, find and maintain markets, and how youth can use social media to find financial support for their startups. One of his aims is to attract fresh faces to farming on a continent that often doesn’t see the opportunities in agriculture.