The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s (MIF) theme for 2024 is Financing Africa. To inform the upcoming research report on the theme, in February-March 2024, MIF surveyed almost a hundred respondents from 54 African countries. For the next three months, MIF will host webinars aimed at unpacking the results of the survey. This month’s one focuses on Assessing Africa’s financial needs.
Overall, according to the survey, Africa’s youth priorities are education and skills training, climate change and employment.
More than half of African youth view Education and Climate change as Top priority sectors.
Respondents were asked to rank key sectors in Africa by order of priority.
- More than half of the respondents selected Education (21.6%) and Climate change (18.6%) as Africa’s top priority sectors.
- Other priority sectors mentioned were governance (strong institutions), Entrepreneurship, Agriculture, Technology and Economic integration.
- Only 7.2% of respondents ranked Energy as the top priority sector but almost 40% ranked it amongst the top three sectors.
- Security was ranked as a low priority for more than a third of respondents (36.1%)
Top priority sector for African Countries
The success of any strategy linked to 'Financing Africa' is inextricably connected with good governance that is conducted in the interest of achieving public goals rather than for the political aspirations of state leaders.
Climate change has the largest sector financing gap in Africa
Which sector in African countries has the largest financing gaps?
- Over 50% of respondents chose Climate change (30.9%) and Infrastructure (20.6%) as the sectors with the largest financing gaps in Africa.
- Respondents found Security (8.2%) to have the least significant financing gap, which may be related to the low priority accorded to the sector (ranked 6th for 36.1%)
Africa needs its own Financing Agenda based on its resources and assets to be implemented by Africans. We are at point that Africa can no longer rely on external partners to finance its own development.
Almost 70% of African Youth consider adaptation as Africa’s top climate priority.
Climate: What should be Africa's top priority?
- The largest majority of respondents (69.1%) selected Climate adaptation as Africa’s top climate priority followed by mitigation (14.4%)
- The remaining 17% of respondents mainly chose Humanitarian support for natural disaster victims (8.2%), Loss and damage (5.2%).
Polluting countries should honour their commitments to support adaptation to Climate Change and acquisition of clean technologies.
Education and Employment are Africa’s Youths greatest financing needs.
What is Africa’s Youths greatest financing need?
- Collectively, almost 70% of respondents chose Education (35.1%) and Employment (34.0%) as the African youth’s greatest financing need.
- Education and skills training emerged as a prominent financial need and priority sector in Africa throughout the survey. Respondents selected it as a top priority and among the top 3 sectors with the largest financing gaps.
- The other youth financing needs selected were Entrepreneurship capital (24.7%), Increased access to technology (6.2%).
