Africa’s young population is often described as its greatest asset. But speakers at the Africa Mindset Reset Forum warned that turning that demographic promise into prosperity requires more than ambition: governments must deliver basic services, open markets and education systems capable of preparing young Africans for a rapidly changing economy. Kwame Ofori Appiah was there.
Speakers at the first Africa Mindset Reset Forum stressed that Africa’s transformation will remain elusive unless it closes the gap between its grand ambitions and the practical challenges faced by citizens, particularly its young entrepreneurs.
Convened by the African School of Governance in Kigali, where young and emerging leaders made up 80% of attendees, the forum explored how Africa could turn its demographic advantage into tangible progress.
Phuthuma Nhleko, chairman of the Phembani Group and former chief executive of MTN, warned that without economic growth capable of absorbing its expanding workforce, Africa could face a “socio-economic time bomb”.
Economic integration, he argued, should be among the continent’s priorities. Developing economic corridors, agricultural basins and larger continental markets would give African businesses the scale to compete internationally.
“If we don’t do that, Africa will never have scale. If you don’t have scale, you don’t have leverage. If you don’t have leverage, you don’t have power,” he said.
Closing the implementation gap
Claver Gatete, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, argued that Africa did not suffer from a shortage of strategies or institutions.
“We have the African Union Commission, we have the Vision 2063, we have the 10-year implementation plan, we have the seven moonshots, we have the African Continental Free Trade Area and the Yamoussoukro Decision. We have all the institutions. There are no more institutions that we can create,” he said.
The missing ingredient, he argued, was execution. “What is important is the political will to execute. And it’s not the political will of the heads of state only, but it’s also the political will of the people below them.”
Claver Gatete, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa
Integrating informal economies
In some cases, young Africans are already moving ahead of policymakers.
Rotimi Olawale, executive director of YouthHubAfrica, said young entrepreneurs were building informal cross-border networks that resemble the integrated African economy governments have spent years discussing. A customer in one country might contact a Nigerian vendor over WhatsApp, he said, before finding someone travelling between the two countries to transport the product.
“That’s the informal economy that young people in Africa are already building. And so, we have to develop the policy to match them,” he said. “We need to ask how we can help our young people. Enough of the talks. Let’s put capital in their hands. And not just tokenistic capital. We’re talking about capital that will enable them to connect and create wealth for themselves and their colleagues,” he added.
Gugulethu Siso, youth engagement officer at the Afrikan Youth Business Council, agreed that young entrepreneurs were finding ways around the slow implementation of regional integration agreements.
“Many of us are already moving goods across the borders, as informally and as illegally as it might be,” she said.
Regulations, Siso argued, often fail to distinguish between large corporations and small youth-led enterprises, while cross-border payments can be so expensive that routing money through international platforms is sometimes cheaper than transferring it directly between African banks.
Wiisichong Bening Ahmed, Secretary-General of the Pan African Youth Union, urged young Africans to push governments to remove visa restrictions and other obstacles to mobility.
“Never lose hope on the possibilities of our continent,” he said, calling on young people not to “give up on African solidarity”. Rather than another wave of policies and frameworks, Ahmed argued, existing commitments needed to be implemented.
“The young people in this room are the foremost domestic resource that needs to be mobilised and harnessed,” he said.
Phuthuma Nhleko, chairman of the Phembani Group and former CEO of MTN
Fixing the fundamentals
Yet mobility, finance and entrepreneurship alone cannot compensate for failures in basic public services.
Ambassador Marie-Antoinette Rose Quatre, CEO of the African Peer Review Mechanism, called for a “back to basics” approach centred on education, healthcare, water, electricity and functioning cities.
She pointed to a contradiction in Africa’s development priorities: while hundreds of data centres are being built across the continent, access to water and sanitation remains limited – even though those same facilities will increase water demand.
The concern, Quatre argued, is that Africa may be looking in the wrong place – pursuing AI-led transformation, while the infrastructure needed to support it could intensify pressure on scarce water and energy, even as millions still lack access to those basic services.
“We need to fix the fundamentals. We need to invest in education and make sure that we have universal access to it. We need to invest in healthcare. We need to invest in something as basic as waste collection. Without these fundamentals, we will not be able to take off,” she said.
Artificial intelligence, Quatre warned, could also threaten employment prospects, given the continent’s rapidly growing working-age population.
“We’ve been talking about the demographic dividend while sitting on a population bulge on the continent. So Africa stands to be affected by artificial intelligence if we don’t address this issue.”
Phuthuma Nhleko similarly warned policymakers against designing African economies around “yesterday’s realities”, arguing that the continent must prepare for the impact new technologies will have on employment and growth.
Professor Tade Akin Aina, senior programme director for higher education and research in Africa at the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, said that preparation must include a fundamental rethink of education.
As AI increasingly performs routine tasks, Aina argued that schools and universities should place greater emphasis on capabilities machines cannot easily replicate. “The essence of education should be independent thinking, independent action, motivation, critical thinking,” he said.
Professor PLO Lumumba, Founder and Chairman of the PLO Lumumba Foundation, pushed the argument further, questioning whether Africa’s enthusiasm for new technologies was sufficiently grounded in the continent’s own realities. “You cannot solve that which you do not understand,” he said. “We are very quick to talk about artificial intelligence, and I ask, whose artificial intelligence?” Africa, he argued, must first focus on necessities that remain beyond the reach of many citizens.
Lumumba also warned that the continent risked producing generations whose economic and intellectual orientation remained outside Africa unless it took greater ownership of education. Children educated through British or French curricula, he argued, could grow into leaders whose economic and cultural ties remained elsewhere. “Africa will only be a hunting ground,” he cautioned, if the continent does not take control of how its young people are educated and how they understand their own societies.
From self-belief to systems
Former Gambian Vice-President Fatoumata Jallow Tambajang placed some of the responsibility directly on young Africans, urging them to establish clear goals, embrace lifelong learning and see beyond national identities. “Don’t see yourself as Rwandans or Ugandans. See yourself as Africans and see how much you can work together,” she said.
But self-belief must be supported by institutions.
Tambajang proposed a continental database of African expertise, allowing governments and institutions to identify and deploy skills already available on the continent rather than instinctively looking elsewhere. Africa must rely on “our capability, our confidence, our integrity, because no one is going to do it for us”.
Aina also argued that financing constraints should become an opportunity to mobilise more African capital through domestic resources and new financing mechanisms. “Every crisis has an opportunity,” he said, calling for Africa to “break the aid dependency mentality” and “look inwards”.
As Lumumba put it, the real test begins after the conferences end.
Speaking to the youth, he said, “You are living at a time when it is the best of times and the worst of times. It depends on what you do about it. After this conference, will you coordinate, or will you wait for another conference?”
The post Big promises, basic needs: Africa’s youth can’t wait appeared first on New African Magazine .
Big promises, basic needs: Africa’s youth can’t wait
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