Force 09 / People & Human Capital
A generation arrives every year.
The working-age population is growing faster than the jobs, and the gap is the whole story.
Where it stands
The arithmetic is relentless.
The working-age population of Sub-Saharan Africa stands at 745 million and grows by about 21.7 million people every year. The labour force is 527 million and adds roughly 15.2 million.
Measured unemployment is 5.7 percent, which sounds comfortable and is misleading. In an economy without unemployment benefit, almost nobody can afford to be unemployed. They are working, at very low productivity, mostly for themselves.
That is why 49.3 percent of employment is still in agriculture. It is the sector that absorbs people rather than the sector that pays them well.
The question is not whether these people will work. It is whether the work will be productive enough to raise a wage, and that depends on what the rest of the economy builds.
What decides it
What decides whether it becomes a workforce.
Demand, then training
Training built backwards from a real employer with real vacancies places people. Training built forwards from a curriculum produces qualified people in a market that does not want that qualification.
Health is an economic input
Primary health care, clean water and a functioning clinic determine how many days a year a person can work and how long a working life lasts.
Migration is a labour market
Most African migration is to another African country or to a city in the same one. Remittances then flow back and fund housing, schooling and small enterprise more reliably than most formal credit.
What outsiders miss
The small trader, the workshop, the transport operator: these employ most of the continent's non-farm workers. They are undercapitalised rather than unwilling.
What it means
This is the asset.
While much of the world is running out of workers, Africa gains 21.7 million working-age people every year. No other continent has that. What gets built around them decides what it becomes.
The Brief
Get Next Week's Opening.
- How big it is, in dollars.
- What has to be true for it to work.
- Who is placed to move first.
Free. One email a week. One click to leave.