Job Creation for Young People in Africa Is an ‘Urgent Task,’ Says Obama

Wrapping up his historic trip to Africa this week, President Barack Obama on Tuesday called on the continent’s leaders to tackle the “urgent task” of creating jobs for future generations and not to waste any time doing it.

“Africa will need to generate millions more jobs than it is doing now,” Obama said during a speech at the headquarters of the African Union, the first one ever delivered there by a sitting U.S. president. “Time is of the essence.”

Pointing to the problems in the Middle East and North Africa, he warned that “young people with no jobs and stifled voices can fuel instability and disorder.”

Africa has the youngest population in the world, with almost 200 million people between the ages of 15 and 24, according to a 2010 report from the McKinsey Global Institute. The continent’s working-age population grew from 443 to 550 million between 2000 and 2008—a growth rate that, if it continues, means Africa’s labor force will outpace even China’s and India’s, according to African Economic Outlook.

Indeed, Africa’s population is expected to double in the next few decades to almost 2 billion people, making job creation an “enormous undertaking,” Obama said. But a failure to address the situation, he emphasized, could create further chaos across the historically troubled continent.

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“The choices made today will shape the trajectory of Africa—and therefore the world—for decades to come,” he said.

The president also made a point of condemning the habit of African leaders’ refusal to step down at the end of their terms, calling out Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza, who announced he was seeking a third term even though the country’s constitution limits him to two.

“The law is the law, and no one person is above the law, not even the president,” Obama said, going on to suggest that some African leaders held on to power to make themselves rich.

If the continent wants to attract foreign investment and fuel further economic growth, African leaders need to clean up that kind of corruption, support human rights, and promote democratic freedoms, Obama said. He also placed priority on national security and peace, pledging U.S. support to fight terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida, the Islamic State, al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram, and announced his plans to secure more international peacekeeping support for Africa at a United Nations summit in September.

The speech capped a five-day visit to Africa that included a homecoming of sorts, as the president made a stop in Kenya, where his late father was born and where he still has relatives. According to various press reports, people lined the streets of Nairobi and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to catch a glimpse of the man whom many in Africa—as Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, chairperson of the African Union Commission, said when she introduced him before the speech—consider “one of their own.”