“They said there were no jobs. But now, I’m earning, I’m teaching, and I’m helping my community grow.” - CFYE youth agent, Kaduna State

In the dusty towns and farmlands of Northern Nigeria, something big is quietly unfolding. Not through top-down mandates or imported solutions, but through the work of young people embedded in their own communities. In five states - Kaduna, Bauchi, Niger, Plateau, and Benue - young people are no longer waiting for opportunity. They are becoming the opportunity. 

Welcome to the ThriveAgric youth agent network, launched under the FCDO-funded Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE). It is a bold, community-rooted model that proves one thing: rural transformation starts from within.

Now a full year into implementation, the CFYE project has completed four quarters of work with ThriveAgric. This article zooms in on the most recent quarter - April to June 2025 (Year 1, Quarter 4) - capturing the scale, learnings, and impact of the youth agent model as it entered its most ambitious phase yet.

Between April and June 2025, ThriveAgric, in partnership with Crust Microfinance Bank and Trace Nigeria, deployed 431 youth agents across five states under the FCDO-supported Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) project. These agents brought financial services, input access, and climate-smart agriculture education to the doorstep of over 14,600 smallholder farmers.

But this is not just about outreach. It is about dignified, performance-based work for rural youth, most of them women and building sustainable systems that will outlive any single intervention.

Across Nigeria, rural unemployment is rising. Meanwhile, smallholder farmers - who produce the bulk of the country’s food, struggle to access finance, inputs, or climate-smart tools. The gap is real. So is the potential .

What if young people from these very communities could fill that gap?

That is the question ThriveAgric, supported by CFYE, answered with action.

Where It is Happening: 5 States, Thousands of Farmers

The agent model rolled out across Kaduna, Bauchi, Niger, Plateau, and Benue States. ThriveAgric strategically embedded youth in communities where access to finance, extension support, and market information remains limited.

Between April and June 2025, ThriveAgric trained and deployed 431 youth agents across five Northern states. These were not just volunteers or field assistants, they were micro-entrepreneurs, paid based on the services they delivered:

Trained in partnership with Crust Microfinance Bank, these agents support:

Crust Agents are especially impactful for women farmers and cooperatives seeking safer, closer access to finance. 

Working within the ThriveAgric system, Tradr Agents:

These youth leaders have taken on climate action roles by:

Each agent operates from within their own community, bridging trust gaps and delivering impact at scale.

What sets this model apart is its insistence on working with, not around, local systems. Before deployment, ThriveAgric held consultations with:

Now, Monthly Farmer Congresses have become hubs where agents can report, listen, and respond. Farmers feel seen. Leaders feel respected. Youth feel empowered.

This is not a handout program. It is a system built around major principles: