Apr 26, 20213 min read

New Africa a world of opportunities.

We support female micro-entrepreneurs in Africa. We are proud to work with African people, especially with female entrepreneurs. All of them make a huge effort to make real theirs dreams come true. Their projects are an opportunity to change their life and to provide them an employment. Entrepreneurship is more than an opportunity, sometimes it is the only option. Today we are going dive deep in this amazing African continent.

So, we are focus in Africa how is the Africa nowadays. Africa offers great possibilities due to its proximity and size: 54 countries, 30 million square kilometres and 1,000 million people. In terms of population, Africa also represents the great problem and, equally, the great opportunity of the coming decades.

The forecast for 2050 is :

1 billion people in the Americas and also in Europe, 2 billion in Africa and 5 billion in Asia.

And in 2100 will be :

1 billion people in the Americas, the same number in Europe, 4 billion in Africa and 5 billion in Asia. This indicates that the place set to experience the greatest growth over the next few decades is Africa.

In terms of the working population (aged 15-64), there will be about 2 billion people in 2050. We are faced with a situation that has never existed before where the main problem will not be the feeding of all these people, but rather the rapid development of these countries. Over the coming decades, the ratio of working African citizens to their children will be very difficult to sustain until there is a level of wealth that leads to a natural decline in the number of children per family, as has already happened in Asia. However, the great opportunity is that it will be the youngest continent on the planet.

Meanwhile, in China it is estimated that the population curve will start a downward cycle and that by 2050 there will be around 100 million jobs without workers to fill them.

Another problem Africa faces is rapid urbanisation: in countries such as The Democratic Republic of the Congo, 75% of the population live in slums, while in Kenya, it’s 50%, and in South Africa, it’s about 25%. However, a more detailed analysis shows that slums in Africa are not linked so much to extreme poverty as they are to the lack of transport infrastructure.

Across Africa, slum areas are on the rise around the most developed neighbourhoods, because this is where people find work and can move around without the need for public transport, which is very poor or non-existent.

Another key to Africa’s growth is its natural resources, 90% of which are unexploited. China, the world’s largest consumer of bauxite, an essential mineral for aluminium production, already buys all the bauxite produced in Guinea, one of the world’s leading reserves of this material.

In Djibouti, a country of only 1 million inhabitants but strategically located, there are already five military bases.

The last of them is under the Chinese flag, which holds 82% of the country’s public debt. There are currently 10,000 Chinese companies in Africa, 85% of them private. It is estimated that over the next 10 years, 60 million Chinese people will move to Africa to take part in its economy. It is not surprising that the term Chinafrica has already emerged.

Another figure to bear in mind is that there are currently 400 companies in Africa with a turnover of over 1 billion dollars, 70% of which are African and virtually all of which are unknown.

The main challenge is to develop infrastructure, not only for transport, but also for industry and education. Talent

We are in a much better world now than we were a few decades ago, and that extreme poverty has been drastically reduced. Now that progress is incremental.

Pic by @_antesart Curator @munllonch

Sources

• Africa, a huge continent:

https://www.mckinsey.com/featuredinsights/middle-east-and-africa/africas-overlooked-businessrevolution

• Africa’s problem is development, not food:

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2018/09/22/africas-high-birth-rate-is-keepingthecontinent-poor

• Slums in Africa: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2017/04/20/exploitation-andshort-sightednessin-africas-slums

• Guinea’s bauxite reserves:

https://www.economist.com/business/2018/11/03/guineasbauxite-boom-is-helping-china-butfailing-locals

• Nigeria’s Amazon:

https://www.jumia.com.ng/

• More than 400 companies with a turnover of over 1 billion dollars: