"Particularly after COVID, companies weren't hiring and prices were rising,"
"I thought: My father and my grandfather were farmers, so why not use that experience and go back to my hometown and try to make a living in agriculture."
"For my father and some people in my family, they sort of saw me returning to the countryside as a step back,"
"When my father saw that I had a clear, thorough business plan, he encouraged me and helped me with the administrative process to acquire land,"
Filly Mangassa, 33, returned to farming after leaving Dakar where he aimed to become a professor but faced high living costs and scarce jobs. He holds a master's degree in criminology and now farms peanuts using traditional tools and a horse-drawn cart. He reports annual profits of about 2 million CFA (~$3,500), higher than Senegal's average yearly income of roughly $2,500. Rising food prices, investments in irrigation, new technologies and government and nonprofit programs supplying equipment, fertilizers and seeds are making agriculture more profitable and attracting young people back to rural livelihoods.
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