A researcher warned this Wednesday, August 10, that the exponential population growth in Africa, often seen as an opportunity, is also a risk because the continent will not be able to employ its youth.
“Yes, we want an Africa that grows fast. But Africa, under current scenarios, may not create enough jobs for its massively growing population. Unemployment – a potential destabilizer – is the big challenge we have to deal with,” said Jakkie Cilliers, head of the African Futures and Innovation department at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS).
In a debate organized by the ISS under the theme “How will global upheavals affect Africa?”, Cilliers presented a study by his department in which four possible scenarios for the world order are proposed, depending on whether the world moves more towards multilateralism or regionalism/nationalism, whether it is more concerned with environmental sustainability or economic growth.
The study proposes a sustainable world, moving towards sustainability and multilateralism; a world of growth, where the major concern is economic growth and globalization; a divided world, where there are concerns about climate, but also a more regional or national vision; and a world at war where the focus is on economic growth and regional/national vision.
Given any of these scenarios, Cilliers concludes, “Africa will not be able to create jobs for its growing population, and even if it improves in all areas, it will still lag behind the rest of the world, because the rest of the world will grow faster.”
“My preliminary concern is that when we look at Africa’s growing population, it does not translate into any economic activity, nor will it for the foreseeable future,” the expert predicted, arguing that the continent is training low-skilled young people, when the world needs just the opposite, namely highly skilled young people.
For the responsible, Africa has “excess human capital and it is not possible that the continent absorbs all this youth. We will have to have scholarships, work schemes, we will have to ‘throw everything’ to solve this problem and, even so, we will continue to have instability,” he warned.
Africa, with about 1.3 billion inhabitants, has the highest population growth rate in the world according to the UN, with estimates that the population of sub-Saharan Africa will double by 2050.
Also according to the UN, regardless of future fertility trends in Africa, the large number of young Africans who will reach adulthood in the coming years and have children ensures that the region will play a central role in shaping the size and distribution of the world’s population in the coming decades.
The August 10 debate was the first in a series organized by the ISS on the future of Africa. The next ones will be on Africa’s relationship with Asia, with the West, and with itself.
