Protocol
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me continue my words of welcome, earlier registered in my opening remarks. On behalf of the Board of the Africa Progress Group (APG), I am delighted that you are able to join us at this event on the public presentation of the maiden edition of the APG annual report on “Making Africa’s Population An Asset”.
I thank previous speakers including members of the Board of APG; the contributors to the study which led to the drafting of the report; representatives of the international community; and the report reviewer – Professor Eghosa E. Osaghae, for giving us some insights into the contents of the book. What may leave you wondering is why my appetite was stimulated to take a bite on the issue of population as the first of the five “P”s, which are the pillars of action by the APG Board. The 5 “P”s are Politics (sound, people-centred governance); Population (managed for optimal benefit and fulfilment); Prosperity (lifting people out of poverty; facilitating self- and social-empowerment and positive social transformation); Protection (all-round security for all); and Partnership (within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world).
Over the last several years, as I travelled through cities and rural communities in Africa, my heart sinks with the sea of heads that fleet across my eyes in parks, marketplaces and under bridges. Even today as I flew over some settlements from Minna to Lagos and traversed the road from Ikeja to Victoria Island, the sheer number of persons literally oozing out from nowhere kept my mind numb and exasperated. By the year, the situation has been worsening and has filled me with a sense of foreboding.
Three clusters of questions pop up in my mind any time the scary thoughts of the ever-increasing population kept me awake at night. The first cluster is: how are we going to feed this exploding population? Only a few days ago, the alarm was raised about imminent food crisis in Nigeria. Similar alarm bells have been ringing with increasing stridency all over Africa. How are we going to house them; educate them, provide them with health security and other variants of human security?
The second cluster of questions is: how do we keep this keg of gunpowder of the large army of unemployed youth from exploding? How do we keep them from enlisting in violent extremists’ groups and in gangs of kidnappers? The third cluster of questions is: how can Africa attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2063 in a turbulent sea of exploding, not-well-managed populations?
While these clusters of questions are frightening, they would appear to have an elegantly simple solution- political will and action to make population an asset. This is the master key of a sort! I am sure you noticed that this “key” has two elements- the will and the action. It is not enough to shroud political will in mere political rhetoric and sloganeering but translating such will into concrete, measurable actions with visible impact on the ground. This is why, in this report, APG, being a group with a burning desire for Africa’s progress has established a unique measure of progress of African countries on the concrete and measurable actions on responsiveness to their growing populations.
APG is delighted and proud to introduce the Population As Asset Responsiveness Index (PARI). Just as UN, AU and other international agencies have established indices for comparing performance of countries with a view to drawing attention towards improvement by stimulating healthy competition, PARI of APG is anticipated to be a stimulus for African countries to show more responsiveness to making their populations more of an asset than a burden. It will be an annual measure computed from credible, published and verifiable secondary data obtained from primary data of UN agencies on the indicators of interest including education, health, food security, housing, energy, transportation and employment. The 2020 ranking should be seen as a wake-up call by African countries and basis for strategically planning for improvement in the coming years rather than basis for dejection by low-ranked countries or complacency by the high-ranked.
Human capital development is the main key for making population an asset. The development partners and private sector can support with harnessing a demographic divided by building capacity for policy implementation into actionable intervention with clear indicators of progress to enable tracking and foster accountability.
Collaboration with the private sector will also provide funding to support promising programmes which address identified challenges among youth and help create private job. Civil society is also a veritable partner in the training, preparation, mentoring and monitoring youth in this three-cornered partnership. The ‘youth bulge’, also described as demographic dividend, offers an opportunity to convert a country’s youth population and human capital into an economic boosting powerhouse, if carefully and sensibly managed and invested with education and skill, health and basic services for longer-term economic growth and capital development. Examples of today’s Africa’s ‘youth bulge’ were seen in countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia in the 1980s, and the well-handling of this phenomenon contributed to their economic growth by 25-33%.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, African governments should not ignore the overwhelming evidence that the failure of leadership to apply a set of hard choices on population management is encumbering progress in the continent. For the avoidance of doubt, APG is not queuing behind the proposition for policies such as one child or two per family as we have in some regions of the world. Our position is rested on the belief that population, large or small, can be harnessed as asset rather than a burden. Besides, the variability in socio-cultural positions on family planning by different African communities should be respected but properly managed. Africa’s growing population if well managed will yield huge dividends for national and regional development.
In the report, we have provided over 150 strategic options for African countries in all sectors in managing their populations ranging from providing quality education for all, through investment in food and nutrition security, health security, environmental security, sustainable housing for all, to entrepreneurship and employment security. The key messages of the report have been extracted as part of the programme you have in your hands. Let me highlight a few:
Youth unemployment rate in Africa is one of the highest in the world. African countries must urgently commit to lowering this rate through a combination of efforts including functional education, entrepreneurial training, and provision of job opportunities and the enabling environment for investment and growth of small and medium-scale enterprises.
The sensitive matter of population control in Africa should be approached in a socio-culturally contextual manner while recognising that uncontrolled population without appropriate safety nets for making the growing population live healthy and productive lives is inimical to national development.
African governments should apply global best practices as it suits their socio-cultural sensitivities. The important message conveyed by APG is to ensure that the growing population is served the best regime of such enablers as education, health, food and nutrition security, housing, employment and security of lives and property to make the population an asset rather than a burden.
The attention paid to education by a country is, in large part, a reflection of its responsiveness to making its growing population an asset. Education is seen as the antidote to poverty and ignorance and the direct and indirect key to unlocking human and material resources of a nation. It can be likened to the hub around which other components of development revolve, like spokes on a wheel. An African country with a huge, educated population (with low illiteracy rate) has a higher chance of making its population an asset for development than one that is populated with persons with high proportion of illiterates.
Productive investment in the health of the citizenry is a major pathway to responsive population management. A nation of healthy people is a denotation that such people will have physical and mental capabilities to contribute to the growth and development of their communities. The clichés that a nation with unhealthy citizens is a dead nation and that health is wealth hold true in this context. Without good health, the ability to work productively is diminished and the opportunities for earning are dimmed. If African countries provide health security for the citizenry, manifold benefits accrue. Healthy populations live longer and are more productive, hence contributing to economic development. Weak health systems not only cost lives but pose some of the greatest risks to the economy.
An African country that is food secure even with the ever-dynamic climatic conditions, incessant growth of the population, increase in the prices of foods and other environmental factors has a higher chance of making its population an asset for development. Food security is a strong economic variable as the cost of hunger and malnutrition is reflected in low productivity, illnesses, deaths, low cognitive development and learning achievement.
Universal access to reliable, affordable, low-carbon electricity is a major key to Africa’s socio-economic transformation.
In spite of the depression in the economy of African countries induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, funding of efforts to make population an asset can be achieved through curbing corruption, reducing financial wastage and adopting diverse ways enumerated in this report.
The first duty and responsibility of any state leadership is security of its citizens, providing public goods and services, ensuring that its population thrive and flourish in peace, inclusiveness and freedom with fundamental rights. Leaders must learn and understand that their role requires knowledge, hard work, competence, persistence, collaboration, partnership and reaching out. It is a serious and demanding undertaking to assume public office and must not be undertaken lightly and without due preparation but with full recognition of the weight of responsibility.
The transition to a high income nation requires human capital levels that continuously improve productivity, sustain growth and are able to create and/or utilise technological advancements rather than being substituted by it. Lack of demographic dividend is underpinned by four major factors – corruption, mismanagement of diversity, mismanagement of resources and poor governance in general. They all impinge directly and indirectly on population as an asset or a liability. Population cannot be an asset in economic terms for as long as the economy is poorly managed. One significant indication of a poorly managed economy is inflation which impoverishes everyone but more so the poor within the society who are further impoverished. In managing the economy for the benefit of the population, high rate of inflation must be avoided like plaque. There can be no sane justification for allowing inflation to run riot.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, there also population-induced challenges facing Africa today and these cannot and must not be allowed unattended. APG plans to give this report the widest publicity to illuminate the path forward in making Africa’s population an asset. We will reach out to all African leaders, the public and private sector, the academia, and all stakeholders and friends of Africa to join hands in plumbing the depths of the options in the report and applying them as appropriate in their different contexts.
It now remains for me to thank all members of our research team who are at an advanced stage in drafting the 2021 report and to specially thank Afreximbank for providing part funding for some aspects of the development of the report as well as all of you who are part of the public presentation of this maiden edition.
It is now my distinct pleasure and honour to present the 2020 report of the Africa Progress Group on “Making Africa’s Population An Asset”.
Thank you.
Olusegun Obasanjo
August 17, 2021
