Africa’s Youthful Future

 Africa is the continent where life began and spread across the world, but despite being the mother of all living, it also is the youngest continent in terms of population.  Sixty percent of Africans are under 25, and in less than a decade from now there will be about 320 million Africans between the ages of 15 and 24. The challenge we face is to ensure that opportunities are there for them. It won't be easy, because by some estimates, Africa will need 18 million new jobs per year for the next 20 years just to match these new entrants into the job market.  Clearly, Africa’s future lies with its youth, but they are being ill-served.

According to the United Nations, for the first time in two decades there has been an increase in the incidence of child labor and the coronavirus pandemic could push millions more youngsters toward the same fate.  In a joint report, the International Labour Organization and the UN children's agency, UNICEF, said the number of children involved in the global workforce stood at 160 million at the start of 2020 - an increase of 8.4 million in four years.

The rise actually began before the COVID pandemic hit and represents a dramatic reversal of a downward trend that had seen child labor numbers shrink by 94 million between year 2000 and 2016, according to the report.  Nearly one child in every 10 worldwide is stuck in child labor, with sub-Saharan Africa affected worst of all.

And the agencies said the pandemic risks worsening the situation significantly.  The report warns that, unless urgent action is taken to prevent more families plunging below the poverty line, nearly 50 million more children could be forced into child labor within two years.

"We are losing ground in the fight to end child labour," UNICEF chief Henrietta Fore told reporters, stressing that "the Covid-19 crisis is making a bad situation even worse".

Now into a second year of global lockdowns, school closures, economic disruptions, and shrinking national budgets, statistics suggest that the number of child workers could potentially be more than five times higher, according to UNICEF's Claudia Cappa, who co-authored the report, which shows that children aged between five and 11 accounted for more than half of the global figure.

Boys are significantly more likely to be involved in child labor, accounting for 97 of the 160 million children toiling at the start of 2020, but girls are often burdened with more than 21 hours of household chores per week.

The kind of manual labor or menial work in which these young people are involved is not what will enrich the lives of Africa’s youth and allow them to power the continent’s progress.  Farm families all across the world have children who help out with farm chores, and girls everywhere help with cooking and cleaning.  That part of this is not problematic.  What is a concern is that many of these boys and girls work at dead-end jobs that won’t benefit their future.

Human Rights Watch conducted a survey last year that demonstrated the devastating impact of the virus on education in African countries. “Our research shows that school closures caused by the pandemic exacerbated previously existing inequalities, and that children who were already most at risk of being excluded from a quality education have been most affected,” their report stated.  According to a 2016 World Economic Forum report, 65 percent of children entering primary school globally today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.  These children being deprived of education now are falling behind in the race to the future, and many will not have the ability to catch up and take their rightful place in Africa’s reconstruction.  By 2050, Africa is projected to have a quarter of the world’s population, of which the majority are youth.  If Africa’s youth can’t thrive, neither will the continent.

Florence Boloko, a senior official at the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ministry of Gender, Family and Children, estimates that thousands of Congolese children have entered the workforce since the new coronavirus closed schools, markets and businesses last year.  Three-quarters of workers in the capital city of Kinshasa are in the informal sector.  Without education to develop marketable skills, they will either remain in dead-end jobs or enter the criminal sector.

While DRC schools reopened earlier this year, many of the students have not returned because the lure of money in a down economy is too tempting.  It is not unreasonable to assume that poor families, struggling to care for all members aren’t pushing too hard for them to leave the workforce, even if it doesn’t lead to a stable future.  It does satisfy today’s needs.

Unfortunately, some leaders see the youth as the biggest problem and not the eventual solution.  Facing rising violence in nearly every region of his nation, where gunmen have kidnapped more than 700 students in the northwest since December, Islamist attacks in the northeast have worsened and there have been nationwide attacks that have burned down police stations and killed officers, Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari is calling on youth to “behave” to allow for more foreign direct investment.

"Nobody is going to invest in an insecure environment. So, I told them, I said they should tell the youth that if they want jobs, they will behave themselves," Buhari told the media several weeks ago. "Make sure that the area is secure. So that people can come in and invest."

But what is the Nigerian government doing to safeguard, educate and employ young people?  Nigerian youth are more often the target of violence rather than the source of it, but during my last visit to the country before the pandemic hit, some young people were tending toward criminality due to hopelessness about their future.  For example, young herders and farmers in Nigeria in the central belt were joining together in criminal enterprises.  The same thing is happening elsewhere on the continent, such as Western Sahara, where Polisario Front leaders told me they feared their young people, trapped in camps and trained for fighting even they hoped would not happen, were turning to illicit enterprises in that turbulent part of the continent plagued by both terrorist and criminal groups.

Over the years, I’ve seen unemployed African youth used as muscle for political parties.  I’ve also seen efforts to turn things around for youth in that regard by involving them in the political process such as International Republican Institute programming in Kenya several years ago.  However, if young people continue to be stymied by the lack of education or the lure of criminal enterprises, no such programming will be sustainable, especially so long as some African leaders see young people as shock troops and not the stepping stones to progress.

Then there is the tendency to use children as soldiers.  Back in 2017, the UN cited seven out of fourteen countries for recruiting and using child soldiers in state forces or armed groups were in Africa: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.  There is no doubt that child soldiers are still serving in these countries and perhaps others.

I have met several innovative young Africans who have formed companies or designed computer apps, but they mostly live and/or operate outside the continent, which has not been a breeding ground for their talents.  If that were so, not only would they enhance the ability of African economies to thrive,  but these young entrepreneurs could create employment for others that would bring many of their countrymen into the middle class.

This is a tragedy that has played out over a long period.  COVID has just made things worse.  Let us pray that African governments will soon realize that the black gold in their countries is not oil or coal, but their own youth.