President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has called for a fundamental shift in how African nations invest in their youth, urging governments and financial institutions to prioritize meaningful capital investment over temporary empowerment schemes.
In a wide-ranging interview on Sunrise Daily, a programme aired on Channels Television on Thursday, Adesina emphasized that the continent’s booming youth population must be seen as an economic opportunity, not a burden. He warned against the ongoing “Japa” trend — the emigration of young Nigerians — describing it as a serious loss for the continent.
“In the case of young people and the japa syndrome, it’s a big loss for us,” Adesina said, highlighting the need to retain talent within Africa by creating the right economic conditions.
He argued that most youth empowerment initiatives are poorly designed and do not address the real needs of young Africans. “Young people don’t need freebies; they don’t need people saying: ‘I just want to give you an empowerment programme,’” he said.
“They have skills, they have knowledge, they have entrepreneurship capacity, they want to turn their ideas into great businesses,” Adesina continued. “What young people need is not those empowerment programmes; they need capital, they need you to put your money at risk on their behalf.”
Adesina stressed that Africa’s population of over 465 million people aged between 15 and 35 is an asset waiting to be transformed into economic power. However, he said this will only happen if leaders take bold steps to invest in education, entrepreneurship, and scalable job creation.
“I do not believe that the future of our young people lies in Europe; it doesn’t lie in America, it doesn’t lie in Canada, Japan or China; it should lie in Africa growing well, growing robustly and able to create quality jobs for our young people,” he said.
The AfDB chief pointed to countries like India and China, where massive populations have been turned into engines of growth through the right investments. “It is what you do with your population; how you skill them up,” he said, urging African nations to replicate such models.
He also criticized the continent’s financial institutions for failing to serve young people. “The whole of the (banking) system is not designed for young people. The commercial banking system and the financial system failed young people in Africa,” Adesina noted.
“Where is the financial market for them? Why is it suddenly a surprise to us that they are leaving? It’s because you are not putting anything down for them,” he added.
To bridge this gap, Adesina revealed that the AfDB has set up the Youth Entrepreneurship Development Bank — a targeted initiative designed to help young Africans access funding for their ventures.
“In Nigeria, we’ve just approved $100 million to establish the Nigerian Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank,” he announced. “The goal is to mobilise $2 billion in investments to support over 38,000 youth-led businesses across the continent.”
Adesina rejected tokenistic financial interventions, stressing the need for genuine wealth creation. “They don’t need N5,000, N10,000. You want to create youth-based wealth. If you don’t, who are the people who will pay the taxes in the future?” he asked.
“You cannot turn your demographic asset into somebody else’s problem. We have to put our money behind our young people to create opportunities for them,” he concluded.
