Neglect Africa now and we will face labour shortages globally, IMF warns

theguardian.com:

The international community would be “playing with fire” if it failed to help Africa recover from Covid and the impact of the Ukraine war, the International Monetary Fund’s director for the continent has said.

Failure to invest and support the continent was shortsighted and detrimental to the global economy, as half of the new entrants into the global workforce over the next decade would come from sub-Saharan Africa, Abebe Aemro Selassie, director of the IMF’s Africa department, told the Guardian.

“In 10 years, one out of every two individuals entering into the global labour force will come from sub-Saharan Africa – the very children whose education the pandemic has disrupted,” he said.

“The human capital we need to motor the global economy is not getting the attention it needs. It’s a massive collective failure,” he added.

“Almost certainly – unless we think robots are going to take care of everything – there is going to be a shortage of labour in most advanced economies, and even elsewhere.

“Despite all the innovations we have had, labour has shifted from one sector to another, and 60-70% of the population has remained in work.

“People will move to different professions, but people will still keep working. Globally, we are going to need labour to complement capital, and that labour input can, increasingly, only come from Africa.”

Selassie, who has worked at the IMF for 28 years, added that the successes seen across the continent since the 1990s – the result of domestic reforms, a booming global economy, and generous aid and debt relief packages – had “gone into reverse”.

Covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine (which has disrupted global supply chains and led to soaring commodity prices) and falling aid budgets had exacerbated