JOBS, EDUCATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP

• “A beautiful diploma, no job?” Over the last five years I had the opportunity to interview in Africa over 800 young, smart, motivated masters in engineering, agronomy and economy, educated by professors with a Western PhD (in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroun, Mali, Niger, Senegal). Five years after graduation three quarters of them still where without a decent job. Reason: a severe lack of jobs in advanced manufacturing industries and associated services. Large families select a couple of their brightest children and invest in a college education for them. They rightly believe that education is a prerequisite for a decent job. I met personally with these college graduates and their families and was confronted with their disillusionment: a pre-radicalisation situation prior to exposure and adoption of extremist ideology.
• Scared for continued Western dominance. In the same countries I visited the workshops of 60 industrial SMEs (agricultural machinery, electromechanical business, agribusiness, ICT). When trying to convince them to seek a partnership with a more advanced international peer they argued “Since decades the leonine clauses of partnership agreements between us and more advanced international partners pushed us to attempt survival in autarky”.

JOBS, EDUCATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP

• Africa’s 'youth employment' crisis is actually a 'missing jobs' crisis. The problem is with the economy and “missing jobs” for everyone—not just for young people. A focus on youth-targeted interventions distracts policymakers and stakeholders from developing the policy agenda for structural change. Policy conclusion no 1: “Industrial policy to increase private investment in labour-intensive manufacturing and services”- Brookings Africa Growth Initiative (September 2020) 
• ‘There is not a single country in the world that has reached a high stage of economic and social development without having developed an advanced industrial sector‘   (Kofi ANNAN, 2015)
• Jobs & Youth Entrepreneurship. When talking to the many young college graduates and their civil society peers they unanimously are convinced that only Africa’s advanced agri-, food- and manufacturing industrialisation and associated services will create per year more jobs than Africa’s demographic growth and solve the root causes of Africa’s 'youth employment' crisis and inequalities.

Greta Thurnberg to world leaders 23/9/3019

Takeaways: 20 million new decent jobs per year in Sub-Sahara Africa - Cheap renewable solar-hydro-wind-biomass energies  – Short value chains – Deglobalisation of manufacturing  - Digitised globalisation of know-how – African demographic dividend – Biodiversity -  Combat desertification – Carbon fixation – Governance – New political powerhouse – A whole of society approach

In an epoch of the Anthropocene, and an unprecedented coincidence of climate change, pandemics, China workshop of the world and Africa’s demographic explosion, Africa’s advanced industrialization is able to achieve a breakthrough in its inclusive human development without putting immense strain on the planet. However, this requires a critical mass of thousands of Africa-Europe SME partnerships. They permanently transfer advanced industrial know-how to Africa and create 20 million new and decent jobs per year.

• Eternally renewable energy for development. In Africa, modern agro-, food- and manufacturing industries and related services make extensive use of the decentralized off-grid solar-hydro-wind-biomass energy resources; they are eternally renewable, inexpensive and without recourse to central fossil fired power plants and inefficient, visually polluting high-voltage lines.
• Short supply chains (de-globalisation of manufacturing, digitised globalisation of industrial know-how). The local processing of African natural resources, in the short value chain, for local and neighbouring markets, leads to a significant reduction in transport kilometres, CO2 emissions and virus spread.
• Deglobalisation of manufacturing. Africa’s increase in well-being gives rise to an important higher educated middle class and a positive cycle of investments and innovations.  Africa’s shining example stimulates worldwide a balanced spread of advanced production in the short value chains close to the end user.
• A formal economy. Industrial value chain partnerships between ‘formal’ European SME’s and African SME’s automatically lead to ‘formal’ economic alliances. All “links” in the international value chain become “formal”.

• Demography. Increasing well-being automatically reduces African demographic explosion and its associated ecological footprint.