This is Africa

Many of us know the aches and pains associated with getting older. It turns out that countries experience something similar as their populations age, putting pressure on the economy, the social safety net, and health systems. “Caregivers in Italy, which is expected to have 12 percent fewer people by 2050, are experimenting with robots to look after the aged. The prime minister of Japan, where the median age is 48, warned in January that his society was ‘on the verge’ of dysfunction.” Having a top-heavy society is the opposite of what’s happening in Africa, a continent experiencing a youth movement that will have impacts across the region and around the world. “Within the next decade, Africa will have the world’s largest work force, surpassing China and India. By the 2040s, it will account for two out of every five children born on the planet … By 2050, one in four people on the planet will be African, a seismic change that’s already starting to register. You can hear it in the music the world listens to. You can see it in movies, fashion and politics. You can sense it in the entrepreneurial drive of young Africans, and the urgent scramble for jobs. You can see it in the waves of youth who risk all to migrate, and in the dilemmas of those who remain.” Declan Walsh in NYT (Gift Article): The World Is Becoming More African.