In the next 24 hours, more than 30,000 African youths will be entering the job market in search of gainful employment opportunities and, very often, an idealized adulthood of the working man or woman portrayed in literature, media and even at family gatherings. The unfortunate reality is that most of these pursuits will end up in failure, regardless of the qualifications and experience of eager new hires. And that is being optimistic. The UN projects that by 2050, Africa’s youth population is likely to grow to a whopping 830 million. That is roughly twice the current population of the entire Middle East and North Africa. In most of Africa’s 54 countries, youths are the largest demographic. On average, 41-45 percent of African youths are below the age of 15, while 19-28 percent are between the ages of 15 and 24. These numbers are not likely to decrease given high fertility, poor family planning and declining infant mortality rates. Africa’s total population is expected to grow to more than 2 billion in the next three decades. The most troubling aspect for the continent, which especially affects the 18-30-year-old demographic, is the catastrophic lack of economic opportunities. Africa remains the poorest continent on the planet, home to 28 of the world’s poorest countries. Nearly half of the African population lives on less than $2 a day, which translates to nearly 300 million going to bed hungry, underfed or malnourished. Some 38 percent of African adults are illiterate, the majority being women, and these numbers are not likely to change given the persistent exclusion of girls from education opportunities. For those who still manage to get into school, there is a pervasive learning crisis that affects the quality of education and even its delivery. For instance, according to a World Bank report, 75 percent of second-grade students failed to count beyond 80, while two out of five could barely complete one-digit addition. In reading, the numbers are even worse, with 50-80 percent of second-graders not being able to answer a single comprehension question based on a short passage, while an even larger proportion failed to read a single word altogether. Only 10 of the continent’s 54 countries have more than a $100-per-capita public fund for health-care expenditures. Households increasingly spend more of their limited funds securing health-care services or worse, not seeking proper medical care, which worsened public health concerns such as the prevalence of HIV/AIDS cases. Africa has more than 25.7 million people living with HIV, constituting the most cases by far worldwide. The current reality and past failures in the Arab world to take advantage of the opportunity that its own youth bulge presented should be avoided in Africa Hafed Al-Ghwell Sub-Saharan Africa lacks an adequate number of medical professionals such as physicians, nurses and midwives. The World Health Organization estimates that there at least have to be 2.5 medical staff per 1,000 people in order to provide adequate primary care. For most countries in Africa, there is less than 0.1 medical staff per 1,000 people, with some as low as 0.01. This trifecta of poverty, illiteracy and poor health care often worsens crises such as the spread of infectious diseases, as happened in West Africa from 2014 to 2016. Currently, an outbreak of Ebola in the Congo is likely to continue spreading even beyond the central African country’s borders. Numbers do not lie, and this is not mere hyperbole. But we should avoid a familiar trap of quantifying Africa’s problems and producing alarmist literature that fails to produce positive results on the ground. What the continent needs is serious engagement across the board. It is also important to draw inspiration from other regions that share some of these problems. For that, the Arab world provides some unique lessons for African policymakers, especially what to avoid regarding youth policy. The current reality and past failures in the Arab world to take advantage of the opportunity that its own youth bulge presented should be avoided in Africa. For the continent, developments in the Arab world — especially any successful or failed attempts at transforming education, private-sector development and creating sufficient opportunities for young adults — are a crucial learning opportunity. The first step is addressing the quality of education and improve access to it. Governments can do so by reforming national education curricula, practices, oversight and regulations with the aim of providing higher-quality learning. Universalizing education, and even making it mandatory up to a certain age, will go a long way toward giving young girls access to education and the opportunities to utilize talents, skills and other gifts beyond the home. It is still possible for Africa to turn its youth bulge into a boon rather than a future curse. Hafed Al-Ghwell is a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the John Hopkins University School of Advance International Studies. He is also senior adviser at the international economic consultancy Maxwell Stamp and at the geopolitical risk advisory firm Oxford Analytica, a member of the Strategic Advisory Solutions International Group in Washington DC and a former adviser to the board of the World Bank Group. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view