The demographic bonus: how prepared is Africa for the gains?
Demography
25
Issue: 2
(12 - 2012)
This paper examines the prospects of Africa’s changing age structure in favor of a
temporary surge in the proportion of the working age population and the possibil-
ity of benefitting from the implied human endowment via appropriate develop-
ment strategies a la South-East Asia.
An attempt to gauge the preparedness of sub-Saharan African countries in order
to take advantage of the incipient demographic bonus, using South-East Asia as
the platform of best practices, shows that sub-Saharan Africa must, on the aver-
age, grow the GDP to a higher level, reduce both public and private consumption
expenditure in order to save and deepen more her investments in education at all
levels and also enhance private spending on health. Besides, intra-African com-
parisons on the development efforts towards the attainment of the MDGs shows
that a lot of sub-Saharan African countries are too slow to adapt to the changing
age structure with appropriate social and human capital development policies
and programs.
Other important variables required, from the South-East Asian experience, are
more investments in physical infrastructures, services and industrial production
which are essential for employment generation in the economy.
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