African Development Bank (AfDB) President, Akinwumi Adesina, has emphasized that Africa’s growing youth population should be seen as an economic advantage rather than a challenge, stressing the need for significant investment in human capital development and financial support.
Speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday, the former Nigerian Minister of Agriculture dismissed the idea of empowerment schemes that offer small financial incentives, insisting that young people require substantial funding to bring their ideas to life.
“In the case of young people and the japa syndrome, it’s a big loss for us,” Adesina stated, referring to the trend of Nigerian youth migrating in search of better opportunities abroad.
“Young people don’t need freebies; they don’t need people saying: ‘I just want to give you an empowerment programme’.
“They have skills, they have knowledge, they have entrepreneurship capacity, they want to turn their ideas into great businesses.
“What young people need is not those empowerment programmes; they need capital, they need you to put your money at risk on their behalf,” he added.
Expressing concern over the mass migration of young talents, Adesina highlighted that Africa has over 465 million youths aged 15 to 35, warning against the risk of neglecting this demographic advantage.
“We have over 465 million young people between the ages of 15 and 35,” he noted, cautioning that Africa should not allow what should be its biggest strength to become “somebody else’s problem” due to a lack of investment in youth-driven innovation and enterprise.
“I do not believe that the future of our young people lies in Europe; it doesn’t lie in America, it doesn’t lie in Canada, Japan or China; it should lie in Africa growing well, growing robustly and able to create quality jobs for our young people,” he said.
Drawing comparisons with India and China, Adesina argued that a large population is not a burden but an opportunity, provided the right policies are in place to equip young people with relevant skills and employment opportunities.
“It is what you do with your population; how you skill them up,” he explained.
He further noted that a well-skilled and employed youth population could drive Africa’s prosperity, particularly by boosting domestic consumption amid rising global trade barriers.
