Across the Global South, young people are yearning for opportunity and a better life. But while 1.2 billion people in developing countries are projected to reach working age over the next decade, only an estimated 420 million jobs will be available to them, leaving nearly 800 million people without a clear path to employment. Even though some of this cohort will continue their education, that would only delay, and possibly prolong, the crisis.

The challenge of insufficient job opportunities will be felt acutely in Africa, where nearly one-third of this generation lives. But forecasts are not destiny. That is why the continent’s future was a central topic at this week’s G7 summit in Apulia, Italy.

The need to focus on Africa’s future is obvious because a world free of poverty on a livable planet will remain an elusive target if the continent cannot harness its abundant potential and create sufficient employment and economic growth. And it is equally clear that a successful strategy for Africa would benefit from the International Development Association, which wields a powerful development tool: affordable financing.

The task is immense because Africa’s challenges are great. Nearly 500 million Africans live in poverty, while conflict, climate change, unsustainable debt burdens, and other crises cast a shadow over the continent’s economic outlook.

But the good news is that there is a path to progress, as evidenced by other countries that have prospered by using IDA’s grants and low-interest loans, embracing good governance, investing in their people, and fostering a business-friendly investment climate. Africa could take a similar path, but it will need the help of organisations like the G7 and others.

We believe a focused strategy that generates jobs while providing the foundational ingredients for development is essential to that journey. In our view, this plan should be anchored in five pillars.

First, we must improve access to electricity, which is a fundamental human right and essential to development. The World Bank Group is working with the African Development Bank to provide electricity to half of the 600 million Africans lacking access to power by 2030, an effort that will require the support of development partners, governments, and private-sector investors to succeed. Fortunately, we are well on our way to building that coalition.

Second, building efficient, high-quality infrastructure is crucial for trade. Moving goods between African countries can be a lengthy and expensive process, because road and rail networks are insufficient, maritime transport is modest, and border wait times are prohibitively long. In a region where 470 million people don’t have reliable year-round transport, investing in physical and digital infrastructure – including cross-border payment systems – will create job opportunities by increasing trade, integration, and financial inclusion.

Third, investment in agribusiness must increase. Only 6% of Africa’s farmland is irrigated, compared to 37% in Asia, and the continent has one of the lowest rates of fertilizer use in the world, leading to yields that are one-third of the global average. With the right fertilizer for the right soil and improved irrigation, Africa’s farmers could boost production, labour demand, and incomes, which could then be used for food, school supplies, and medicine.

For example, an IDA-financed initiative in Mauritania and its neighbouring Sahel countries is helping 390,000 farmers— almost half of them women — irrigate their farmland using affordable technologies.

Fourth, healthcare systems must be strengthened. The World Bank Group aims to help low- and middle-income countries provide healthcare services to 1.5 billion people by 2030 – which would demand skilled jobs. But we must think even bigger because strengthening health infrastructure and pandemic preparedness is essential to development.

Lastly, promoting tourism would create jobs for women, who make up the majority of the sector’s workforce, and accelerate economic growth. But this will depend on improved infrastructure and access to electricity and health care. Moreover, like the other four areas, it also requires a commitment to education and skills development to succeed, built with a digital foundation.

IDA is an essential partner and knowledge source in advancing this agenda. It is the largest provider of financing and the main source of liquidity for many African countries. Last year alone, 75 percent of IDA’s commitments – more than $25 billion — were to Africa, a 24 percent increase over five years. Its financial model turns every donor dollar into nearly four dollars in new resources. And, if successful, proposed measures to simplify IDA would improve access and help countries focus more on developing real solutions for their people.

Simply put, IDA is the best deal in development, as 19 African heads of state recently recognised. It’s also a reminder of what we can accomplish when we join together as partners in progress. With IDA’s support, we can target jobs — and growth-producing sectors, engage the private sector, and help Africa secure the prosperous future it deserves.

Mohamed Ould Ghazouani is the President of Mauritania and Chairperson of the African Union; Ajay Banga is President of the World Bank Group.

There is losing, and then there is losing. The loss that the African National Congress suffered in the recently concluded elections in South Africa is a loss of a special type. It is almost as if the erstwhile liberation movement willed this loss on itself.

This is Africa’s oldest political organisation, which, with its longevity and the special task imposed on it by history, became more than a party or a movement but rather became more like a nation — the nation of Black South Africans.

I mean, if you were a Black man or woman in South Africa and you wanted to identify as somebody who wants to be respected as a human being, you were automatically ANC.

True, this is somewhat exaggerated, but it is not very far from the truth. For most of its life since its founding in 1912, it always identified with and represented the people of South Africa, taking an all-inclusive approach to the struggle for all the racial, ethnic, and confessional groups in the country, even when the exactions meted on the country by the most nefarious ideology on the planet could have suggested, and did indeed, suggest a more exclusivist outlook in favour of the majority racial cohort.

It sought to unite and to mobilise energies nationally and internationally, and create a more equal society for all, that would be in sync with the most advanced and progressive thought of the world at different stages of its career. It became home for all South Africans regardless of colour, creed or social station.

Even after Apartheid was officially promulgated as the philosophy and practice of the national government after 1948, the ANC hardly veered from that steadfast philosophical vision. To galvanise adhesion and grow ownership, the ANC adopted strategic blueprints for the future, including the Freedom Charter of 1955, setting out the basic things the movement would do when it came into power.

In the face of intransigence on the part of the Boers, the ANC saw the need to alter strategy and accept that armed struggle was inevitable, and launched the MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation) to spearhead armed insurrection.)

Though MK was more effective as a propaganda tool than a fighting force, it did the job of getting the white minority in the country to realise that their lives of comfort were numbered as things stood, and that it made more sense to seek some form of accommodation with the Blacks.

Once that was effected, even those Whites who had been diehard supremacists suddenly realised, with regret, how stupid they had been all along: Not only were these Blacks, long considered subhuman, not only fully human but also corruptible—just like the Whites.

And so the White establishment set out to work on their old enemies, corrupting them to the core with the luxurious goodies that up to then the nouveau riches had not imagined, with things like the erroneously termed “Black Empowerment”, a programme designed to yank from the bosom of the people a handful of individuals with sufficient appetites to make them forget about the Freedom Charter.

Probably more than anything, it was this that spelled the start of the demise of the ANC. In the past, we had seen former freedom fighters in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau scramble into the blinding lights of Lourenco Marques, Luanda and Bissau, to be destroyed by the perils of Original Sin.

But South Africa was different in that the erstwhile oppressors simply took even the former “terrorists” by making them filthy rich, detached from the depressing realities of the masses of their people, by making them, in effect, traitors. So much so that when the workers at Marikana went on strike against a company owned by the current president of the country, the latter had absolutely no qualms about sending in the police to kill scores of protesters!

Now, the phenomenon of two sitting presidents being replaced by their party is spectacular in itself, but it belied a body politic that was groaning under its dead weight of sleaze and factionalism.

It may seem to some observers that the only thing that kept the various hungry factions together was the white-run oppressive system, and that after this was replaced with money-making cabals of ex-comrades, we found an ANC that was ideologically bankrupt and politically rudderless.

Now the ANC has to deal with the electoral result that has denied it an absolute majority for the first time, its crimes and misconduct have caught up with it. It has been sent to a political purgatory to atone for its sins, but while there, it must choose whom to work with among its sworn enemies:

Will it choose the DA, a lily-White party whose feeble attempt to ‘bronze’ itself with the recent choice of Mmusi Maimane as its head failed miserably? Will it rather be Jacob Zuma’s MK party, which is shamelessly an ethnic outfit bent on rehabilitating a misfit who has been disgraced multiple times as a rascal and a thief? Or could it be the EFF’s Julius Malema, whose day job has become, for some time now, to lambast the person of the current president and chief of the ANC?

We shall see.

Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: jenerali@gmail.com