NIGERIAN youths and their counterparts in other African countries need funding to drive their ideas and not N5,000 or N10,000 empowerment, the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, has said.
He specifically noted that the migration phenomenon known as ‘Japa’ in Nigeria is a big loss for the country and the continent.
The former agriculture minister expressed his concern during an interview monitored by our correspondent on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday, April 10.
“You cannot turn your demographic asset into somebody else’s problem. We have to put our money behind our young people to create opportunities for them.
“They don’t need N5,000, N10,000. You want to create youth-based wealth. If you don’t, who are the people to pay the taxes in the future? Where are you going to get the capital mobilisation in the future? You have to, therefore, invest in the same demography so you can reap in the future,” Adesina said.
He stressed that youths in Nigeria and others in 51 African countries do not need freebies under the guise of empowerment schemes, but capital to fund their ideas and translate same into enduring wealth.
“In the case of young people and the japa syndrome, it’s a big loss for us. Young people don’t need freebies; they don’t need people saying ‘I just want to give you an empowerment programme’.
“They have skills, they know, they have entrepreneurship capacity, they want to turn their ideas into great businesses. What young people need is not those empowerment programmes; they need capital, they need you to put your money at risk on their behalf,” Adesina maintained.
He asserted that the African continent has over 465 million young people between the ages of 15 and 35, warning that these demographic assets should not be turned into “somebody else’s problem” due to the inability to believe in young people and invest in their ideas for continental prosperity.
“I do not believe that the future of our young people lies in Europe; it doesn’t lie in America, it doesn’t lie in Canada, Japan, or China; it should lie in Africa growing well, growing robustly and able to create quality jobs for our young people,” Adesina said.
The AfDB president defended that Africa’s youth population is not a problem for the continent because India’s and China’s populations have not been a problem for their countries.
“It is what you do with your population; how you skill them up,” he said, explaining that if young people in Africa are skilled with good jobs and social protection, it would lead to prosperity for the continent because the demography has high purchasing power.
He posited that in a world of rising tariffs, it is important for Africa to build consumption as part of its gross domestic product (GDP).
Adesina pointed out that the financial system in Africa is not designed to support young people on the continent, lamenting that the financial system has failed young people in Africa.
“We have over 465 million young people between the ages of 15 and 35. Where is the financial market for them? Why is it suddenly a surprise to us that they are leaving? It’s because you are not putting anything down for them.
“We must recognise that the young people are our biggest asset; the demographic asset has to become an economic asset, and to do that, you have to put down capital,” he said.
In a recent report by The ICIR, young Nigerian professionals interviewed bared their minds on why most of their colleagues are eager to leave the country once they acquire the requisite skills.
This concern has been fuelling Nigerians ‘ exodus to foreign lands and has been a subject of concern over the years.
Also, there are further worries over getting the right funding to finance entrepreneurship in Nigeria, which The ICIR spotlighted in a recent interview with a former top bank official, Anthony Chinwe, who revealed where the bottlenecks lay in small businesses getting funds for their enterprise.