The power of Africa’s youth population

You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.

A company’s strategy and cash flow needs often determine whether it pays dividends to reward its shareholders or reinvests profits into the business to drive growth. Dividends serve as an indicator of an institution’s financial health, helping to attract investor demand and thus influencing stock prices.

They communicate a company’s upcoming prospects and performance, with mature companies more likely to pay dividends as opposed to growth companies.

According to World Data Lab (WDL), Africa is home to 532 million young people between the ages of 15 and 35, with this number expected to grow in the coming decades.

The continent’s burgeoning youth population has been characterised as the “youth or demographic dividend”.

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An argument can however be made that the continent is yet to realise this dividend.

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Lobbying for youth in property
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Africa’s ‘youthquake’

According to WDL, over 10 million young people enter the African labour market each year while current growth patterns are estimated to only create some three million formal jobs.

The gap between sustained economic growth and sufficient decent work is thus exposed.

In 2025, 90% of employed youth on the continent were engaged in informal work – earning a living outside established legal and regulatory systems. The highest rates of informality were recorded in central, western and eastern Africa, while north and southern Africa had lower informality rates.

Source: World Data Lab

In this episode of The Business of Africa, we profile the state of young people in South Africa as the country marks Youth Month in June.

Tsakane Zibi is a young person who reached out to us wanting to talk about the stubborn unemployment rates in the country but also solutions to shifting the dial from loss to dividend. She is a market analyst at Barloworld Equipment.

Source: StatsSA

For Africa to declare a ‘youth dividend’, sustained effort must be undertaken to drive economic growth in sectors that create decent work opportunities at scale.

Furthermore, targeted interventions in education, training and the absorption of young people into the formal labour market must be considered. These, among many other material investments in young people, hold promise of a real return for the continent – and, arguably, the world at large.