How Africa’s population evolves, and how the continent’s economies develop, will affect nearly everything people near and far assume about their lives today.
If
climate change is the most important matter of common concern around the world,
what comes second? Perhaps nothing close. But by my lights, the usual looming
questions—about the fate of American power and influence, Brexit, the related
viability of the European Union, and the many uncertainties surrounding the
rise of China—seem almost parochial in comparison to one that gets immeasurably
less international attention: the future of employment in Africa, where
unprecedented demographic transitions are underway.
Based on
current projections, the continent’s population of nearly 1.2 billion people
will rise to 2.5 billion by the middle of this century—more than China and
India combined. From there, it becomes harder to predict with any certainty,
but Africa could very well have a staggering 4 billion people or more by 2100,
according to United Nations projections, meaning that the continent alone would
account for more than a third of the human population.
This is
at once a topic that lends itself to lots of fear-mongering and racism as well
as disinterest and neglect, none of which the world can afford. That is because
how Africa’s population evolves, and how the continent’s economies develop,
will affect nearly everything people near and far assume about their lives
today.
Europe—more
deeply connected by history to Africa than most Europeans realize, and
positioned right on the continent’s doorstep—will be the most dramatically
affected. But as a new African diaspora swells, virtually every region of the
world will be too. Think of Israel, which has tried to pay thousands of African
migrants to leave the country, offering plane tickets and $3,500. Think of
Latin America, which has become a surprising migration route for Africans
hoping to reach the United States. Think of faraway China, where an African
community in the hundreds of thousands—estimated to be the largest in Asia—is
centered in the city of Guangzhou. Think of the United States itself, already
home to one of the largest African diasporas in the world, by virtue of its
history of slavery, as well as through more recent migrations. All will see
much larger populations of African immigrants seeking to build new lives,
likely orders of magnitude more.
Africa’s
huge population growth will surely lead to alarmist calls from outsiders on how
to limit this demographic boom. Yet Africans should not and will not submit to
the proposition that they are any more of a problem than people from any other
part of the world, especially given the history of the slave trade that for
centuries drained the continent of millions of its most able-bodied people to
serve the needs of other countries. People from Africa are as much of a
resource as humans anywhere. Europe today already faces its own stark
demographic challenges, but they are precisely the opposite of Africa’s.
Europe’s crisis is one of falling birth rates—some of the lowest in the
world—and an aging population. This demographic decline is already leading to
shortages in the European labor market and other economic strains.
Against
the current tide of xenophobic populism, European leaders must find the courage
to embrace African immigration much more actively. Since African migrants will
be coming to Europe one way or another, the smartest approach is a form of enlightened
self-interest that gradually increases immigration levels and works to welcome
more and more African labor and talent into the European workforce. To succeed,
governments and civil society will need to work to educate Europeans about what
is at stake for them, and not make integration seem merely inevitable, but
positive.
But this
all comes back to jobs, and for good reason. Employment in Europe, North
America and even further afield will not be enough to meet the needs of
Africa’s burgeoning population. Employment in Africa is the most urgent
challenge, but one that much of the world is ignoring. Instead, observers and
policymakers in both Europe and the United States get riled up about reports of
China’s economic advances across Africa, or more recently—and even more
laughably, given the size of its economy—Russia’s.
Some
commentators also pretend that China is in the process of industrializing
Africa. This is largely a fantasy, and an unhealthy one, because it makes space
for magical thinking about the continent’s problems and thereby avoids serious
focus on the daunting challenges at hand. Through no real fault of its own,
China is mostly an obstacle to African industrialization. That’s because China
industrialized decades ago and now dominates with overwhelming advantages of
scale most of the sectors that newly industrialized economies, like those in
Africa, seek to enter. African economies trying to follow China’s lead,
therefore, face historically uncommon challenges. Coupled with another
challenge that Africa faces—its severe Balkanization into 54 mostly small states,
many of them further handicapped by being landlocked—the prospects of deep or
widespread industrialization become even more unlikely.
The
practical solutions for Africa are threefold. First, agriculture, not industry,
is the key to providing work for the hundreds of millions of Africans to come.
In many African countries, more than 50 percent of the labor force already
works in agriculture; in some states, like Burundi and Burkina Faso, it is more
than 80 percent. Yet Africa has the least productive agriculture of any
continent, according to the World Economic Forum, and at the same time has the
most unexploited productive land.
Every bit
of this equation has to change, with the help of every major foreign partner.
Agriculture can become a dramatically larger source of wealth for the continent
and its peoples, one that gives them hope and reasons for sticking around. “The
continent’s best bet is agriculture—modernizing agriculture,” W. Gyude Moore, a
former Liberian minister of public works, and now a fellow at the Center for
Global Development, told me. “A robust agriculture sector that begins to trade
with other sectors of the economy will be the basis of a sustainable path to
industrialization. It will provide food security and improve balance of
payments, as food imports decline.”
The
second pillar is education. Here again, every self-described African partner
should be redoubling its investments, in good measure for reasons of
self-interest. Better education on the continent—from universal literacy and
schooling for girls to vocational training and higher education—will help the
continent modernize, raise incomes and encourage people to remain in their
places of origin by increasing their wealth. But since vastly greater
emigration is inevitable, education will also help raise the capacities of
those who leave the continent, and make them better able to contribute to where
they go. Already in the United States, it is an underrecognized fact that
African immigrants have a higher level of education than both the immigrant
population as a whole and the U.S.-born population.*
Finally,
Africa and its foreign partners must greatly accelerate ways to remove barriers
that still hinder the movement of people, goods and capital between the
continent’s many small and divided markets. There has been some encouraging
news on this front lately with the launch of the African Continental Free Trade
Area, or AfCFTA, an agreement that aims to create a common market starting next
year. Its promise, however, is already challenged by the reluctance of some of
Africa’s largest economies, such as Nigeria, to live up to the deal’s terms.
Europe,
which drew the arbitrary lines that divided much of Africa at the Berlin
Conference of 1884-1885, should take the lead in helping the continent
accelerate and deepen these kinds of economic reforms. Its own experience in
expanding continent-wide trade and economic ties, culminating with the European
Union, makes it an especially apt partner.
Europe’s
political imagination and economic will in forging new relations with
Africa—ones based on belief in their common destiny—have been flagging since
the Cold War. If Europe fails to help engage the continent in much more
transformative ways now, before the demographic momentum becomes overwhelming,
it will have itself to blame.
*Editor’s
note: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that African
immigrants have the highest level of education of any immigrant group. WPR
regrets the error.
***Howard
W. French is a career foreign correspondent and global affairs writer, and the
author of four books, including most recently “Everything Under the Heavens:
How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power.” You can follow him on
Twitter @hofrench. His WPR column appears every other Wednesday.