Two young delegates from Africa visit a photovoltaic power generation park in the Talatan Gobi Desert, Northwest China's Qinghai Province, on September 12, 2025. Photo: IC

Editor's Note:

As 2026 marks the Year of China-Africa People-to-People Exchanges, friendship between the people forms the vital cornerstone of China-Africa ties, and the cultural and people-to-people exchanges serve as the enduring engine of intergenerational friendship between China and Africa.

The Global Times, in collaboration with South Africa's Independent Media, has launched a series titled "Global South Dialogue." We have invited Chinese and African experts and scholars to engage in in-depth discussions on a wide range of topics related to China-Africa relations and their international context. The sixth installment of the series features discussions on the theme of "jointly promoting youth development and building a future-oriented China-Africa talent ecosystem."

Africa's youth surge: a strategic asset yet to be unleashed

Augustin F. C. Holl (distinguished professor emeritus at Xiamen University): Relying on UN data, in January this year, the African population is nearing 15.7 billion. There are, however, significant regional variations in population distribution and growth rate. Central Africa has the fastest-growing population. East Africa is the largest population block. It is the age composition that sets the current African population in a special category, with 60 percent of the population in Africa being under 25 and the population of young people aged 15-24 in Africa projected to reach 500 million in 2080. 

Mammo Muchie (professor at South Africa's Tshwane University of Technology): Africa is witnessing a demographic momentum which presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to harness a demographic dividend. A demographic dividend is the potential for faster economic growth when a country's working-age population grows larger relative to its dependent population of children and elderly people. It enables the country to take advantage of the opportunities and respond to the new challenges that demographic transition brings.

The problem is that Africa's demographic dividend faces many obstacles: slow fertility decline, inadequate job creation, especially in manufacturing, poor education and skills mismatch and so on. Without addressing these challenges, Africa's youth bulge risks becoming a demographic burden rather than a dividend.

Paul Frimpong (executive director of Ghana-based think tank Africa-China Centre for Policy and Advisory): Today, Africa is the world's youngest continent, home to a rapidly expanding population of young people whose energy, creativity and ambition will shape the global development in the decades ahead. This demographic reality presents both opportunity and urgency.

Many young Africans work, often intensely, but in low-productivity and informal activities. This reflects that the economies are still transitioning toward higher value-added production, rather than a lack of effort or aspiration.

The real question, therefore, is not how many young people Africa has, but whether the right systems exist to translate youth potential into productivity, innovation and leadership. Demography alone does not create development, but strategy does. This is where China-Africa cooperation becomes especially relevant. With its experience in large-scale skills development, industrial transformation and long-term planning, China is uniquely positioned to partner with Africa in turning a youthful population into a powerful engine of shared growth and modernization.

Africa can draw valuable lessons from China in youth development

Mammo Muchie: Africa can draw lessons from the development, modernization and demographic dividend strategies for youth development followed by China. The China youth development strategy is guided by the Middle- and Long-term Youth Development Plan (2016-25). The focus of the plan is on comprehensive and inclusive growth in education, health, job creation, employment, and social integration and solidarity by addressing youth unemployment and urban-rural disparities.

Africa can learn from China's experience to link economic development with demographic shifts, focusing on massive investments in Africa to proactively design policies that align economic development with education, health, promoting family planning, fostering labor-intensive industrialization, diversifying economies and building infrastructure to transform its youth bulge from a potential burden into a significant demographic dividend for sustainable growth.

Wang Jinjie (research assistant professor at the National School of Development and the Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development at Peking University): China's experience is often summarized as turning demographic changes into productivity growth through a synchronized package: demography plus reform plus employment absorption.

A declining dependency ratio created a favorable age structure, but dividend capture depended on reforms that enables labor reallocation and mass job creation. The World Bank notes that China "succeeded in capturing the demographic dividend," with estimates attributing a meaningful share of growth to demographic structure changes. Large-scale basic education expansion, skills formation and public health improvements were paired with infrastructure and industrial capacity building, so workers could actually be absorbed into productive sectors. 

Augustin F. C. Holl: Job creation and entrepreneurship in all activity sectors are an absolute necessity. The whole continent provides a large and open market and substantial space to maneuver. Africa needs infrastructure, roads, railways, ports, a power grid and local transformation of raw materials to export value-added goods. Regulation will have to be simplified, and people's well-being must be at the core of the new economic policy for Africa.

If we really want the youth to contribute to the future prosperity of a continent, they have to be given space. 

Why is China-Africa cooperation important?

Paul Frimpong: China-Africa cooperation is particularly relevant at this stage of Africa's demographic transition because it sits at the intersection of youth, industrialization and long-term development planning. Unlike partnerships focused narrowly on aid or short-term interventions, China-Africa cooperation has consistently engaged with productive sectors.

Chinese-supported industrial parks and special economic zones have created environments where skills training is linked directly to production. In countries such as Ethiopia and Egypt, light manufacturing in textiles, apparel and building materials has generated entry-level industrial jobs, enabling young workers to transition from vocational training into factory employment. Cooperation is also expanding beyond traditional manufacturing.

China-Africa cooperation can reinforce these pathways by linking youth programs to industrial corridors, logistics hubs and cross-border infrastructure. When youth are embedded in these systems, cooperation becomes not a social add-on, but a core pillar of economic transformation.

Wang Jinjie: My research on industrial parks and firms highlights a practical entry point: linking enterprises with local education/training institutions to relieve skilled-labor bottlenecks and convert investment into local capability.

For example: Co-developed technical and vocational education and training plus apprenticeship systems embedded in industrial parks and anchor firms (curricula, instructor training, jointly run training centers, portable certification). Job-quality upgrading, not only job counts (progression ladders from entry jobs to skilled technician/supervisor roles). Entrepreneurship plus supplier upgrading (youth-led SMEs plugged into procurement and maintenance contracts).

The most durable complementarity between China and Africa comes not only from trade and infrastructure, but also from investment in capability and productivity so as to increase resilience, with skills ecosystems as the transmission mechanism.

Mammo Muchie: The youth, both in China and Africa, are the change-makers and game-changers. All the stakeholders from both China and Africa must collaborate to make sure that all future generations can lead a life with adequate work, health, security and peace.