WHY EDUCATING AFRICAN YOUTH?

It is an opportunity and an imperative.  Population trends indicate that, by mid-century, Africa will be the dominant global demographic — skewed heavily toward youth.  More than half of Africa’s 54 nations will double or more by 2050, the product of sustained high fertility and improving mortality rates. The continent by that time be home to at least 25% of the world’s population, compared with less than 10% in 1950. Expansion on this scale is unprecedented.  Whereas the population of Asia will increase by a factor of four in this timeframe, Africa’s will have risen tenfold.

“Chronic youthfulness”, as demographer Richard Cincotta has termed it, is the demographic condition of Africa.  Approximately 40% of Africans are children under the age of 14, and in most African countries the median age is below 20.  African mothers will give birth to about 450 million children in the 2020s.  This number is projected to rise to more than 550 million in the 2040s — about 40% of all children born worldwide in that decade.  The net result is that the continent will contribute 1.3 billion of the 2 billion increase in the global population between 2019 and 2050.

Against this backdrop, and given an environment where demand for education exceeds availability, P2M intends to play a leadership role in addressing a silent but emerging and compounding crisis.  Toward this end, it is building relationships with the public and private sector in the United States and governments in Africa that see P2M as a vehicle for serving effectively otherwise unserved needs in their countries.