Demographic evidence and projections hold substantial potential to support policymakers in SSA in making informed, forward-looking decisions that address critical development challenges while efficiently leveraging emerging opportunities. Crucially transformative growth that accommodates SSA country population shifts will only be achieved through long-term planning and evidence-based policy.
The decisions taken today are not only vital for SSA’s development trajectory but have global implications, impacting trade, geopolitics, migration patterns, and even cultural dynamics, such as fashion trends. Demography, therefore, presents a unique opportunity to align and connect multisectoral stakeholders across global, regional, national, and local levels, while also facilitating interdisciplinary knowledge exchange.
However, demographic considerations remain underrepresented in major policy discussions, where growth strategies often prioritise gross domestic product (GDP) expansion with the assumption that fertility declines will follow automatically. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, demographic issues had gained prominence, largely due to the African Union’s (AU) leadership in encouraging member states to harness the demographic dividend through investments in youth. This was built on a 2017 roadmap aligned with Agenda 2063[3], the AU’s 50-year vision for socioeconomic transformation. The AU’s approach emphasised investment across four strategic pillars:
- Employment and entrepreneurship: Promoting job creation and youth-led enterprise development.
- Education and skills development: Improving access to quality education and training aligned with labour market needs.
- Health and wellbeing: Investing in healthcare, particularly sexual and reproductive health, to ensure a healthy, productive youth population.
- Rights, governance, and youth empowerment: Supporting youth participation in governance and decision-making and protecting their rights.
The 2017 AU theme underscored the need to translate demographic potential into a skilled and empowered workforce. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic diverted attention, and demography has since receded from the top of political agendas in many SSA countries.
This concern was echoed during the Wilton Park roundtable, where participants expressed a desire to reinvigorate the demographic discourse and link it more effectively to economic development, for example through renewed public finance management strategies. This requires governments to prioritise within constrained budgets, making difficult but essential long-term investment choices. Importantly, budget planning must be strategic, sequenced, and anchored in robust demographic evidence. However, budget allocations are inherently political. In many SSA countries, ethnic (and increasingly religious) politics dominate the allocation of public funds, with political incentives often tied to population size. As a result, each decision carries opportunity costs that must be recognised and addressed when advocating for change.
Policy area examples
At Wilton Park, four policy areas were highlighted where demography can provide an essential lens to guide strategic investment and policymaking:
Policy areas
| Inclusive growth | GDP growth must be more equitable, benefiting a wider share of the population to build a sustainable African middle class. Demographic data is essential for identifying where and how to direct investments. This requires independent institutions, operating outside direct political control, to ensure transparency and accountability in decision-making. |
| Employment | Labour market reforms must align with demographic trends and business needs. Job creation for growing working age populations will require improving foundational education, vocational and skills training, expanding small business access to finance, and potentially providing incentives for private sector job creation, especially for youth. Reliable demographic data is foundational to these decisions. |
| Environment and climate change | Environment and Climate Change: effectively addressing the impacts of climate change on populations is urgent, and will help to generate benefits from demography-linked policies. This demands integrated analysis of demographic and climate data, focusing on adaptation strategies, pragmatic interventions, and the scaling of successful local, low-carbon solutions. |
| Conflict and governance | To reduce tensions and mitigate potential conflict, demographic evidence and projections (including migration data) must be used to understand and respond to the needs of growing youth populations. This includes communicating findings in accessible ways, improving trust, and engaging both national and traditional leaders. Strengthening coordination and promoting mutual learning are key to success in this area. |
These four themes do not exclude other areas where demographic data should inform policy. For SSA to adapt to a rapidly growing population and benefit from its demographic trends, planning and investments must also address urbanisation strategies and policies, tax and fiscal policies, social protection systems, migration policy, entrepreneurship and SME support, regional trade (e.g. African Continental Free Trade Area), food security and nutrition policies, and investments in human capital development and infrastructure.
Despite the urgency, short political cycles often undermine the continuity required for long-term demographic planning. Furthermore, the current global financial conditions are unfavourable for many African countries, resulting in high interest rates and low foreign investments. However, not all impactful changes require large investments. For example, improving girls’ access to secondary education can lead to reduced early marriage, better maternal and child health outcomes and lower fertility rates. Similarly, easing market constraints for small businesses (particularly for female-led businesses that face unfair constraints due to gender norms and fewer assets) through improving access to finance, registration and compliance with quality standards can improve business performance, increase innovations, help increase household savings and long-term investments in children’s futures.
The World Bank has promoted the concept of dynamic demography for a flexible approach to policy, investment, and budget planning that evolves in tandem with population dynamics. For instance, pension age policies must be adjusted over time to reflect changing life expectancy and dependency ratios. Similarly, investments in education infrastructure must be informed by projected enrolment needs and workforce requirements. This requires responsive fiscal rules and responsive governance structures. Effective policies and budget reforms, grounded in demographic evidence, can unlock additional investment flows and build trust among international partners. However, these efforts must be backed by clear action pathways and long-term investment strategies.
[3] The AU’s Agenda 2063: 36204-doc-agenda2063_popular_version_en.pdf; The AU’s 2017 Roadmap on Demographic Dividend: AU 2017 DD ROADMAP Final – EN_2.pdf