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Take the high road and reap that demographic dividend

Thursday September 27 2018
tvet

Student tailors learn at the Mpeketoni Vocational Training Centre in Lamu County. There is growing evidence that increased investments should be focused on skills and vocational training; secondary education; empowerment, most notably of girls; and in health. PHOTO | NMG

By LEILA PAKKALA

Africa today has its biggest opportunity to pull millions of children out of poverty and position its young people at the frontline of changes transforming the global economy through the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

A modelling exercise of Africa’s demographic dividend done by Unicef shows that the continent can achieve an average per capita income growth rate of 5.2 per cent annually if it invests in its children and adolescents between now and 2030.

To achieve this, African governments and their partners – the private sector, UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, donors, religious organisations, youth and communities – will need to pull together their political, economic and social capital to harness the potential of the world’s youngest population.

There is growing evidence that increased investments should be focused on skills and vocational training; secondary education; empowerment, most notably of girls; and in health.

We know that lowering the youth unemployment rate to that of adults would translate into a 10 to 20 per cent increase in Africa’s GDP.

In South Africa, an investment of 2 per cent of GDP would create 925,000 new jobs for young people in two sectors of the economy, while in Kenya, according to the World Economic Forum, youth-focused investments in areas such as online talent platforms could result in more than half a million people earning by 2025.

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A focus on girls will also be paramount. Indeed, the World Bank has said each year of secondary education for a girl correlates with as much as a 25 per cent increase in wages later in life. And according to The Lancet, investments in adolescent health and wellbeing bring a triple dividend of benefits now, into future adult life, and for the next generation of children.

The numbers are startling. Combined, such investments would help the continent maximise the benefits of Africa’s youth population as they transit into the labour force and catalyse a period of unprecedented economic and social development.

That scenario is the high road.

The low road scenario paints a picture that nobody wants to see: Increased unemployment and underemployment, sluggish economic growth, migration, instability with the potential for more violent conflict and an addition to the continent’s eight million internal refugees.

At current investment levels and patterns, the pathway leading to the demographic dividend seems slim.

Unicef’s analysis of recent expenditure trends indicates that only three of the 21 governments in East and Southern Africa are meeting the minimum investment requirements for health (15 per cent of the budget according to the Abuja Declaration) and seven for education (20 per cent of the budget based on the Education for All Incheon Declaration).

Further, it is estimated that less than 2 per cent of adolescents are enrolled in some type of non-formal or technical and vocational education and training programme in the region.

In 2002, official development assistance was 20 per cent of the national budgets in East and Southern Africa. Today it stands at around 8 per cent.

ODA remains critical, as does mobilising more domestic resources, prioritising them in the right sectors and programmes, spending them better.

The required areas for investment in Africa’s children and youth are both traditional and non-traditional. Areas often not at scale – such as adolescent programming and vocational training – are emerging as accelerators of the demographic dividend.

This means governments, the private sector, partners in the UN, in development and civil society have to think and invest differently. It means gathering thought leadership, looking at non-traditional approaches and investing at scale.

This is not the work of one grouping or sector. It is about collective responsibility and leadership. Investing in Africa’s children and adolescents remains Africa’s best opportunity to strengthen the economic gains of recent years. This is the moment.

Leila Pakkala is Unicef’s regional director for East and Southern Africa. This is the first of four articles about the demographic boom in sub-Saharan Africa.

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