By Chris Diaz
The world’s youth population is large and growing by the day. It is estimated by the United Nations that there are over 1.2 billion people aged between 15-24 years, accounting for between 16% to 18% of the global population.
While in most areas of the world, the youth population is decreasing or flatlining, in Southeast Asia and Africa, the youth population is experiencing a significant increase.
From the 1950s to date, Africa’s population has been growing steadily and has gradually outnumbered Europe to reach 1.3 billion by 2020, becoming the world’s second largest population after Asia.
Africa has the youngest population in the world with almost one billion people under 35 years. As of 2020, the median age in Africa was 19.7 compared to 42.5 in Europe, 38.6 in Northern America and 32.0 in Asia. Africa accounts for about 22.7% of the world’s youth population.
This bulk of youthful population forms a key concern to policy makers and governments when discussing the future of youth in the context of employment and entrepreneurship.
Employment and entrepreneurship are intrinsically linked to education. According to the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), over half of Africa’s citizens education need to grow across the region.
While there are improvements in terms of access to education, still only around half of those who would qualify for lower secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa are enrolled.
The report concludes that the African average score for Education Quality, which measures the quality of basic, secondary and tertiary institutions, needs major support for growth and high quality of partnerships.
This demonstrates that in Africa the average match between the skills needed by businesses and the education requirement is not up to par with the rest of world, showing a need for private and public sectors to escalate higher education levels and create better job prospects.
Very few of the 15–24-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa participate in vocational education.
This limits the skills required for employment opportunities while the biggest opportunity is developing entrepreneurship for the youth programs.
Unemployment in Africa
To put the importance of this in context, recently, almost 16 million young people in the continent were looking for stable jobs, with youth statistics for unemployment generally higher in urban areas than in rural areas.
In South Africa for example, the country with the second largest GDP on the continent, 55% of young people were hunting for jobs. In Kenya, there are over 10 million youth in the active labour force, with 31.45% either under-employed or wishing to grow their careers.
By 2030, 30 million young people are expected to enter the African labour market each year.
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, only 3 million new formal jobs are currently being created against a project 18 million new formal jobs would be needed annually to deal with the talent and empowering young leader’s programs.
It is imperative that we focus on programmes to create employment and promote entrepreneurship among the youth for revenue generation and value addition to the economy.
We live in a period of unprecedented opportunities resulting from giant technological leaps, now being referred to as the 4th Industrialization age.
With this comes new opportunities for young people to overcome the seemingly tough employment outlook.
Agriculture is one such sector where opportunities remain to be exploited, and food security demand remains strong.
Agriculture is expected to remain the main pool of employment for youth in sub-Saharan Africa, but for many young people, agriculture is still often seen as outdated, unprofitable and hard work.
New digital technologies are, however, empowering communities with not only the latest technologies to maximize on yields but also with information and solutions to navigate the supply chain ecosystem and tap into new markets including intra Africa business.
This is a critical opportunity in a continent where food shortage is still rife despite the availability of production resources. In countries like Kenya and Ghana, young people are daily developing new mobile applications intended to boost agricultural production.
It has been thought by experts that technology will be at the heart of most of tomorrow’s jobs, and computing and advanced technological skills, such as knowledge of artificial intelligence, will be highly sought after.
However, knowledge and mobile phones will not be enough. Governments must invest in resources and policies that ensure affordability, value addition with manufacturers, and access to agricultural inputs required for both crop and livestock production.
This is not only limited to the agricultural sectors, but new advancements and opportunities are emerging in information technologies, sports, manufacturing, financial services and retail services among others.
Africa needs to transform swiftly, and the challenge is for private sector and governments need to make rapid progress in instituting regimes that will facilitate cross border trade among African countries.
For example, African countries often do not mutually recognize diplomas and certificates, resulting in limited intracontinental mobility.
Bodies such as the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) can do more in identifying and reducing barriers to this interconnectivity.
For the leadership groups and companies to churn out policies that favour the youth in employment and entrepreneurship, involvement of youth is key.
Most youth in African countries feel that their governments and private sectors, needs to support revenue generation jobs, and partnership with youth business programs is recommended.
The gap between the median age of Africa’s population and that of its executive leaders is about 45 years.
With some of the challenges faced by young people requiring entrepreneurship spirit and business solutions, it is only natural that their training is focused on successful leadership of business.
It is only by empowering young people with the tools, skills, and networks needed to identify employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, or start and grow partnerships with private sector organizations and support from the public sector.
These are our future leaders and appreciate new business partnerships that will transform our economies.
Source: capitalfm
