Ghana President John Dramani Mahama has urged Africa to take action on rapid youth population growth.

President Mahama strongly reiterated the need for African governments to urgently address the challenges posed by the continent’s rapidly growing youth population.

Mahama warned that Africa’s demographic surge could become a “ticking time bomb“ if governments fail to create enough jobs for the millions of young African people entering the labour market each year.

Speaking during a panel discussion at a Public-Private Partnership Dialogue in Yokohama, Japan, as part of the Ninth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), President Mahama stressed that traditional sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing alone could not absorb the spiralling workforce.

He went on to identify the creative industries, renewable energy, and digital startups as emerging areas capable of generating jobs at a faster rate than the traditional economy, urging African governments to channel greater investments into those sectors.

“Africa needs to create about 12 to 15 million jobs per year,” Mahana said. “You cannot create that in agriculture, manufacturing, and industry alone, but the rate at which the creatives and digital space add jobs is much faster than the traditional economy”.

At the time of writing, the population of Africa sits at approximately 1.555 billion, equivalent to 18.83 per cent of the global population. Africa’s population has increased by a staggering 87 per cent since 2000 and currently has a fertility rate (average number of births per mother) of 3.95.

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