Giving Compass' Take:

• Forbes profiles Jehiel Oliver, the social entrepreneur behind Hello Tractor, which aims to be an Uber-type app for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa by connecting them to the tools they need.

• Reducing the complications and labor with farming may help draw more young people to the profession, which could boost the agriculture industry in an area that badly needs it. How can we support both entrepreneurs such as Jehiel and the customers he's trying to reach?

• Here's how we can unlock more innovations for farmers via non-traditional financing.

Uber’s ride-sharing technology has become ubiquitous over the last 10 years, and its model has been adapted to everything from snow-plowing to dog-walking services. Now, social entrepreneur Jehiel Oliver and his organization, Hello Tractor, have demonstrated another use: fighting poverty and scarcity in Africa’s remote rural communities.

That fight is especially critical for the continent’s youth. Less than a quarter of the more than 350 million young Africans who will enter the labor force by 2035 will find formal wage employment. That demographic bulge could have scary implications for Africa and the world. Surging youth populations can easily push fragile nations to the brink, driving food insecurity, migration, and violent extremism. But, correctly harnessed, they can also offer an opportunity for accelerated economic transformation of the whole continent. Earlier this year, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs produced a report (for which Jehiel and I served on the task force) examining how the agricultural sector — the single largest employer of young people in sub-Saharan Africa — can be a key driver of this change.

But how do you sell agriculture as a meaningful career for young people? Hello Tractor, founded in 2014, is helping illuminate one path: By cutting down on the labor and the drudgery long associated with farming, they’re making it more attractive and more lucrative for the next generation. In just a few short years, the organization has reached more than 250,000 smallholder African farmers.

Read the full article about the entrepreneur behind Africa's "Uber for the farm" by Willy Foote at Forbes.