Africa’s new economic strategy must unleash the energy of youth. It must do this by creating a favourable and stimulating business climate, introducing responsible economic management based on the promotion of equal opportunity in economic activity, fair competition, the rule of law and merit, as well as a ruthless fight against rent-seeking, privilege, clientelism, and the intertwining of business and politics.
The African continent has very significant development potential, although, of course, the situation varies significantly in terms of growth rates, development patterns and the progress of reforms at the national and regional level. However, there is a certain common denominator for the continent as a whole, the main features of which are:
- Continued deindustrialisation, which is a cause for concern since, according to the World Bank, the share of industrial value added in sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP fell from 30.3% in 1998 to 24.2% in 2016, and the share of manufactured goods in these countries’ exports fell from 29.4% to 28.6% over the same period. Worse, “the contribution of the manufacturing sector to GDP is (with the exception of South Africa) less than 10%, and employment in industry does not exceed 1 million people, which is 3.5 times less than in South Korea alone.”
- Insufficient infrastructure is widespread, particularly in relation to roads, highways, ports, airports, industrial sites, energy, drinking water and sewerage, to name only the most strategically important sectors.
Indeed, if the average road density in the world is estimated at 94.4 km per 100 km2 of land, in Africa it is only 20.4 km, less than 22% of the world average, of which only 25% is paved. The situation with air transport is not much better: in 2015, the number of passengers carried was about 45 million, while in the Asia-Pacific region there were 23 times more, and six times more in Latin America.
In terms of other basic infrastructure, Africa consumes only 3.2% of the so-called primary energy used in the world.
In 62% of the continent’s rural areas, access to clean drinking water is limited.
On the other hand, according to Felicien Ngasso, “if 40% of the world's population lives less than 100 km from the sea coast, then for Africa this figure drops to 30%, and in Sub-Saharan Africa it is even less. Thus, Africa is the least open of all continents and has a large number of landlocked countries (15, or almost a third).”
- Extroverted development, of a sort, driven by a few large foreign powers and a few multinational corporations rather than driven by internal dynamics.
The consequence of all these paradoxes is the landlocked nature of many countries on the continent, the mobility restrictions faced by most African megacities, non-endogenous and non-inclusive development, the predominance of low value-added industries in the economy, the extremely low capitalization of the huge potential of natural resources and such a distribution of wealth, from which the local population benefits almost nothing and which ultimately entails a development model that does not create enough jobs for young people.
The data is very telling. Indeed, today about 13 million young people seeking work enter African national labour markets every year. In response to this demand, only about three million new jobs are offered across all sectors of the economy. As a result, the number of young job seekers each year is four times greater than the number of positions available. It is obvious that given the current economic conditions of Africa, it is objectively impossible to ensure full employment for all young people who enter the national labour markets annually.
Therefore, job creation is, first and foremost, the creation of a critical mass of new economic activities for the productive, sustainable and dignified integration of the maximum number of young people entering the labour market. This belief is based on two realities. On the one hand, there is an almost mechanical cause-and-effect relationship between the level of unemployment and the volume of enterprises created by countries, including small businesses. Additionally, while the United States created 2.5 million new businesses in 2015 with a population of over 300 million and France is estimated to have established over 540,000 new businesses during the same year with a population of 66 million, in Africa only 1.5 million new businesses were established despite a population of 1.186 billion people.
On the other hand, an analysis of the structure of the employed working population around the world shows that the private sector is the main provider of jobs, with a figure approaching 80%. Central and regional government agencies and enterprises account for only about 20%.
In addition, the basis of any real strategy for sustainable employment growth is indeed entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship; creative entrepreneurial initiative aimed at creating wealth is realised through economic development.