Africa is often spoken of as being blessed by a ‘demographic dividend’ in the form of its overwhelmingly youthful population, but the question of whether the continent will succeed in reaping the potential economic benefits of this hangs in the balance after the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that youth make up a large and growing proportion of the overall population of Africa means that the ratio of those who are potentially economically active, compared to those who are not, favours strong economic growth for decades to come.
But this depends on the continent’s ability to generate employment for the young fast enough to accommodate large numbers of new entrants to the labour market. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has set back Africa’s progress on many fronts. According to the latest International Monetary Fund outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, employment fell by about 8.5 percent in 2020, more than 32 million people were thrown into extreme poverty, and disruptions to education have jeopardised the prospects of a generation of schoolchildren. African students missed 67 days of instruction due to school closures, more than four times the level in advanced economies. Catching up on this learning, and developing skills for the labour market, will be one of the great challenges of the continent’s recovery path. Skills development will increasingly have to be modular, to allow the young to bridge learning gaps, and it will increasingly have to transcend the classroom setting through digital offerings.
