Africa / Rising population and youth unemployment

(Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor) – Nearly 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are aged between 10 and 24, and that number is expected to climb to about 561 million by the middle of this century. Africa has the highest concentration of young people anywhere on the planet.

How many would see themselves as part of some vast global bounty is a moot point, however. Of the 1.2 billion 15- to 24-year-olds in the world – 200 million of whom are in Africa – about 75 million are looking for work. In the poorest regions, many of those who are employed work in low paid, insecure jobs with little hope of advancement. Faced by economic uncertainty and lack of opportunity – cast as possible agents of social unrest and seen as a potentially lost generation – if young people are gifts, many must feel like unwanted ones.

The effects of this twofold trend of rapid population growth and rising youth unemployment are especially visible in the late Maathai’s own country, Kenya. Over the past half century, the number of people in Kenya is estimated to have risen from just over 6 million to about 44 million. Much of that growth may be attributed to the period between 1950 and 1985, when every Kenyan woman had an average of about eight children in her lifetime.

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via Africa’s rising population and youth unemployment challenge | Global Development Professionals Network | Guardian Professional.