Keywords

Introduction

Africa possesses young people in abundance in an ageing world, and it sits atop vast natural and other resources. Beyond raw materials and natural resources, the sheer number of young humans in Africa combined with its resource potential might threaten the balance of power in a globalised world. This chapter argues that Africa’s current economic volatility stems from a continuing combination of neocolonial extractive agendas, warped political settlements employed by its political elites, global capitalism, and the associated politics of globalisation. As we enter the next era by 2030, when 1 in 4 young workers on earth could be African, development success should mean that either (1) Africa gets its act together and applies all that agility into converting its resources into goods and services that the rest of the world needs, which will allow the emergence of a new “Wakanda-type” superpower in 30–50 years (a potential competitive threat to the powers that be), otherwise (2) Africa continues to get it wrong, and the rest of the world is overrun by hordes of hungry, agile, and angry young Africans. Either way, the rest of the world would do well to pay attention to Africa’s sustainable development. Even though the story has been one of GDP Growth without real impact per Capita, the Youth are finding ways and means to create world-beating solutions in some sectors. The chapter then examines a different approach to sustainable development with practical lessons from a grazing reserve in Northern Nigeria to show that governments can do a lot to spur inclusive prosperity through sustainable management practices.

African Volatility

Africa is volatile; that is true. Some have submitted that “Africa will remain turbulent because it is poor and young, but also because it is growing and dynamic. Development is disruptive but also presents huge opportunities…” (Cilliers, 2017). Is it Africa’s youthfulness and poverty that make it volatile? “Despite India’s growing economic success, a recent study by Oxford University found that over half of India’s youth [just shy of Africa’s youth population] lives in acute poverty….” (Morrison, 2017), yet India is nowhere as turbulent as Africa. Growth and dynamism in Africa throw up a level of turbulence that could support development in disruptive ways perhaps, but why is this currently not being harnessed (with a positive impact on the environment and growth in revenues and profits) to produce sustained and sustainable development in ways that reduce disparities in income and wellbeing between different groups in society, without damaging the rights of future generations to similar opportunities? (Kraaijenbrink, 2019). There must be more to the African condition that impedes the delivery of sustainable management practices than poverty and youthfulness.

Disruptive Development

Africa has been unable to industrialise to pull its citizens out of poverty in search of disruptive development. Instead, it seems trapped into the role of raw materials and natural resources provider to the world’s significant producers at unsustainable human (social), material (environmental), and financial (economic) costs. Given the inability to turn Africa’s situation into opportunities, African governments must understand the continent’s strategic importance to global capitalism and global politics. It might be that Africa’s emergence from poverty is being systematically resisted through the instrumentality of aid, as Dambisa Moyo and Mallence Bart-Williams have asserted. What does Africa possess in abundance beyond raw materials and natural resources that might threaten the balance of power in a globalised world? Do African countries need to be more questioning of prescribed, contemporary political and economic models of development on which they attempt to build and sustain economic growth, particularly from the famous multilateral institutions? What is the way forward in the search for sustainable development that brings inclusive prosperity in the nations of Africa? What can African governments do?

Political Economy of Sustainability

If we liken volatility in Africa to a significant symptom with deeper causes, the youthful demography and poverty of Africa may help it spread and persist, but they are not the root causes. Perhaps some of the social and economic forces doing sustainable management practices are challenging to apply in Africa. Still, there are environmental and governance dimensions to the problem as well. Preserving the environment requires political choices and governance arrangements to achieve, suggesting the need to look deeper into how politics and governance impact social and economic forces to produce sustainable management practices. In fact, “…sustainable development is a socio-economic movement aimed at integrating political, economic, and social activities, focused on protecting the natural balance and the sustainability of basic natural processes to ensure meeting the basic needs of certain communities and citizens of both the contemporary and future generations…” (Bartniczak & Raszkowski, 2019). This chapter will examine the “…interrelationships among individuals, governments, and public policy….” (Investopedia, 2021), in search of why sustainable management practices are not being utilised to spur the sort of development Africa used to elicit the kind of development Africa needs.

In Search of Root Forces

Africa’s Economic Volatility

Where Africa grew in 2002–2014, this has been mainly driven by demand for resources from China, which has now waned as its pace of growth has slowed, leaving a corresponding lull in Africa’s resource-fuelled growth. Experts agree that Africa’s development can neither be inclusive nor sustained if it is not driven by industrialisation and other forms of value addition. However, this is currently at a deficient level. Some argue even in decline as “…the contribution of Africa’s manufacturing sector to the continent’s gross domestic product declined from 12% in 1980 to 11% in 2013, where it has remained stagnant over the past few years, according to the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)” (Tafirenyika, 2016). Nevertheless, prospects for such industrial development remain as “the continent is well endowed with natural resources necessary for resource-based industrialisation. The continent is sitting on more than US$82 trillion in discovered natural resources, with the potential to contribute US$30 billion a year in government revenues over the next 20 years. Africa also possesses other natural resources – minerals, rivers, forests, fisheries, etc., in vast quantities worth a significant amount. The value-added of its fisheries and aquaculture alone is estimated to be more than US$24 billion. However, many countries continue to export raw materials with little value addition” (Ahouassou, 2017).

If African governments know these facts, why have they continued to export raw materials without added value?

Neocolonial Extractive Agendas

The purpose of colonialism in Africa was extraction. Henry Stanley is credited for having sign-posted Africa’s raw materials as necessary to fuel the industrial revolution, which later morphed into the scramble to control actual territories in Africa by the British and European powers of the day (Conrad, 2021). Today, such “use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries, especially former dependencies” or “…the control of less-developed countries by developed countries through indirect means” (Halperin, 2014). “From Algeria to Angola - and from petroleum to platinum, iron ore to oceans - the scramble for Africa’s resources has often caused problems rather than created prosperity” (bbc.com, 2012). Problems such as unsustainable human (social), material (environmental), and financial (economic) costs are borne by the people of such countries, sometimes for generations. The primary buyers of the resources control commodity prices. They, in turn, pay just enough to secure their monopoly over it, insufficient for Africa to fund (or acquire other capacities for) an industrial revolution of its own. In this way, Neocolonial pressures conspire to keep Africa a net exporter of raw materials.

Warped Political Settlements by Africa’s Political Elite

After the Cold War, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the decline of the Soviet Union, political ideology in Africa has also been evolving. The journey to democracy in Africa has not produced clear cut Egalitarian, Libertarian, or Communitarian States. Still, the continent is replete with the Corporatist States, where the direction of State Policy is dictated by the specific combination of business, military, civil servants, labour, ethnic, religious, civic, academic, etc. Elite groups combine to seize control of the State in questionable electoral processes. A resulting corpus then forms from a process of political settlements (a political settlement is a tacit agreement among powerful groups about the rules of the political and economic game, that keeps the peace by providing opportunities for those groups to secure a distribution of benefits such as resources, rights, and status) that they find acceptable) (Kelsall & Hickey, 2020). The result is usually policies that help the ruling elites to hold on to power and decide its distribution within their group, manifested by who has access to benefits such as resources and privileges with which they consolidate their position while marginalising, excluding, and repressing others. Depending on how narrow or broad the social foundations are and how dispersed or concentrated power is within the settlement structures, there are typologies of what political Elites are incentivised to deliver to citizens (Kelsall & Hickey, 2020). Given the poor pace of development and lack of industrialisation, one can conclude that power concentration has been more dispersed than concentrated, and the social foundations for Africa’s Corporatists States typically narrow rather than broad as “Elites lack incentives to create institutions for broad-based development and instead compete amongst themselves for rents and perquisites….” (Kelsall & Hickey, 2020). Leaders in countries with large populations would, therefore, have a relatively large group of elites to “keep satisfied” with such rents and perquisites that in the worst case, such distribution might be what keeps the peace leaving little room for development (since raw materials export is typically an easier route to generate the settlement funds than by attempting to industrialise). In the light of this perhaps, one may better situate the statement in a BBC report that, “In Nigeria, the continent’s biggest oil producer, at least $400bn (£250bn) of oil revenue has been stolen or misspent since independence in 1960, according to estimates by former World Bank vice-president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili. That is 12 times the country’s national budget for 2011.

Meanwhile, 90% of people live on less than $2 per day (bbc.com, 2012). Although not quite as stark as this everywhere, Africa’s political elite may have borrowed a leaf from Nigeria where warped political settlements by Africa’s political elites conspire to keep Africa a net export of raw materials.

Global Capitalism and the Politics of Globalisation

The world competes with China. China has struck an alliance with Africa in ways no superpower before it has ever dared. China’s strategy of not “meddling” in the political affairs of its partners; its willingness to invest staggering sums in Africa’s infrastructure projects, whether appropriate or not, have placed it in the position of partner-of-choice to Africa’s political Elites. China is nobody’s fool in its relations with Africa as it has demonstrated that it can also enforce against defaulters in a sleight-of-hand that mortgages local infrastructure (Port of Djibouti) and its ability to execute against defaulting countries, and raw materials or a strategic national function (policing in Zambia) to it. Africa’s sensitivity to China is now high as its resource fuelled growth is linked to activity in China. The potential losers in this relationship, in the long run, could include African citizens; however, the West (US, Europe, Britain), the former colonial powers in Africa also appear to be losing out in this global competition for raw materials to fuel a fourth industrial revolution. The instrumentality of the World Trade Organisation becomes more strategic in this scenario, and China’s support for the African, Okonjo-Iweala, to emerge against Donald Trump’s wishes for the US demonstrates the strategic importance of this fight, and the current campaign of disinformation by Britain and Europe against China in Africa is also instructive. Global capitalism and the politics of globalisation conspire to keep Africa a net exporter of raw materials. With China, Africa’s other resources could potentially be at risk too.

Why Should the World Pay Any Attention to Africa?

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “The Future is African.” “Projections show that by 2050, Africa’s current population of 1.4bn will double. That means that one out of every four people on Earth might be African just 30 years from now.” The UN ECA projects that “there is growing consensus that Africa’s youthfulness will continue to grow for the next 50 years while the other continents are ageing.” This will either be an opportunity for the world or a significant threat depending on perspective. The Brookings Institute suggests this will be an opportunity; many others suggest it will be a threat. The spectre of 3 billion-plus young Africans handling resources crucial to the continued prosperity of an ageing rest of the world would be a significant cause for concern for two reasons: (1) Africa gets its act together and applies all that agility into converting its resources into goods and services the rest of the world needs to allow the emergence of a new “Wakanda-type” superpower in 30–50 years; (2) Africa continues to get it wrong, and the rest of the world is overrun by hungry, agile, and angry young Africans. Either way, the rest of the world would do well to pay attention to Africa.

Inclusive Prosperity in Africa

GDP Growth Without Impact Per Capita

Despite rapid resource-driven growth, especially between 2002 and 2014, Africa has struggled to translate such increased revenues into better livelihoods for the majority, her young citizens. This is probably as earlier presented, because of Neocolonial extractive agendas that induce the sale of raw materials on the cheap; warped political settlements among Africa’s political elites that promote the corrupt distribution of common-pool resources among a select few; and Global competition and the politics of globalisation that work to keep Africa out of the fray of competitive producers of goods and services. Because raw materials exports are typically an arrangement between African governments and their international investors or joint venture partners, any growth in revenues realised from increased volumes and prices is not connected with the citizens’ productivity. Therefore no direct impact is felt. The way to build Africa’s economies is bottom-up considering its political economy: it must be from the productivity of citizens, and this will naturally elude African governments and their international collaborators/advisers/donors even though in some sectors, the youth are finding ways and means, demonstrating their ability to be world-beating, pulling themselves up by the bootstrap. Finally, lessons from such bottom-up success need to translate into world-beating National Economic Strategies like China’s Belt and Roads Strategy.

Development Needs to Be Connected to the People

“It is my dream to see Africa’s wealth benefiting all Africans on the continent in a global context and ALL facets of life” (Ngane, 2018)—Mallence Folorunsho Bart-Williams (Young, female, African, Global Entrepreneur) (Mallence.com, 2017). When sustainable management practices are properly implemented, the result should be inclusive prosperity. “Inclusive prosperity is a measure of economic productivity that reflects how far all population sectors are empowered to contribute to the economy and share in its benefits. In short, it aims to show what makes cities [countries and continents] successful– both economically and socially” (Carroll, 2019).

According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), more than half of Africa’s population lives on less than $1 a day (Assa, 2012). Nigeria, having overtaken India as the country housing the most significant number of the world’s poor “83 million people living in extreme poverty” (worldbank.org, 2020), is now the “poverty capital” of the world with corruption, unemployment, and inequality identified as top reasons for this (Panchal, 2020). The same appears true across the rest of Africa: According to Transparency International (transparency.org, 2021), “With an average score of 32, Sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest-performing region on the CPI [Corruption Perceptions Index], showing little improvement from previous years and underscoring a need for urgent action;” The African Development Bank (AfDB, 2016) says, “Of Africa’s nearly 420 million youth aged 15–35, one-third are unemployed and discouraged, another third are vulnerably employed, and only one in six is in wage employment;” and, Oxfam (Seery et al., 2019) warns that, “…Africa is the second most unequal continent in the world… The richest 0.0001% own 40% of the continent’s entire wealth.”

“By 2050, the continent’s 18–35 demographic is projected to reach more than 800 million” (Pointer, 2020). Young people across the continent have come to understand being young as being at the receiving end of various frustrations while being consistently marginalised, excluded, and repressed. The response of the teeming masses of young people in Africa has then been a strategy of making themselves available (to whoever would use them for whatever ends) because they have not yet figured out more effective ways to achieve their inclusion. In contrast, a few have managed to channel their creativity towards innovations. Those who have achieved success appear to have done so despite, rather than because of, government, and so they tend to continue to search for some scheme to propel them to the top rather than rely on formal routes like education as a route to gaining work experience, and work experience as a route to steady jobs and incomes. Those unable to find the motivation to keep trying on their own attempt to escape by emigrating, others by taking to drugs, alcohol, and such, while others do so by rebelling against society (resorting to crime or violent extremism).

According to STATISTA (2021), the median age in Africa is currently 19.7 years, and according to Runako (2021), the average age of an African President is 62 years. The political elite also bands around this age bracket as well. Aspirations of Africa’s youth, including how they would like development to impact them, do not appear to be well understood by these leaders who are at least two generations older. Still, the leaders typically agree on the need for more inclusive prosperity, fearing that a youth uprising might be successful in Africa. It is not clear whether Africa’s leaders understand the career paths and job platforms young people seek for their economic inclusion.

The Youth Are Finding Ways and Means

Younger players are rapidly innovating from within the “poverty capital” of the world, across Nigeria’s Film & Drama, Music, Sports, Sports Betting, Art, fashion, Software/Coding, Fintechs, etc., and turning them into much higher value industries than they were a couple of decades ago. Things have evolved (without government) that despite persistent constraints and challenges on the music scene, for example, Wizkid, the young musician based in Nigeria, sold out his November 2021 concert at the 20,000-seater London O2 Arena in 12 minutes (Moore, 2021). Burna Boy, another musician, sold out the same arena earlier in 2021, selling the tickets by himself, “I sold out the O2 by myself, at prices that I wanted. The way I wanted. Never talk too much, show action” (Alake, 2021). “…a study conducted by Statista in Nigeria revealed that the music sector’s revenue grew from 26 million US dollars in 2014 to 34 million dollars in 2018. According to the research and projection by Statista, this figure is expected to grow to 44 million dollars by 2023… The statistics from these studies reveal that the music industry possesses both the capacity to support millions of teeming youths and generate considerable revenue for the economy” (Nnamdi & Oludayo, 2021).

Locally, Funke Akindele’s “Omo Ghetto” movie “…accounted for 48 per cent of revenues and 47 per cent of attendance in Nigerian cinemas”, grossing N442m in Q1, 2021 (Augoye, 2021). “The local industry employs about a million people and generates over US$7 billion for the economy. The industry accounts for 1.4% of GDP, according to IMF reports. According to trade.gov (2020), Nigeria produces around 2,500 films a year with a projection of US$22 million by 2021 for total cinema revenue.” In sports, John Mikel Obi, Nigerian footballer at Chelsea football club, has an estimated net worth of N23billion (Sunday, 2021). He is just one of many African internationals now employed by European football clubs.

A Fintech company was recently celebrated over the funds it raised globally; Flutterwave was developed by Nigerian young people and is now valued at over $1bn (Kene-Okafor, 2021). According to McKinsey, “…a youthful population, increasing smartphone penetration, and a focused regulatory drive to increase financial inclusion and cashless payments, are combining to create the perfect recipe for a thriving fintech sector” in Nigeria (Kola-Oyeneyin & Olanrewaju, 2020). How do young people approach their constraints and challenges that build momentum for development against the odds?

Example of This New and Different Way

The challenges which hamper the achievement of sustainable development management in Africa reportedly include “…extreme poverty, rapid population growth rate, rapid urbanisation, deforestation, the environmental impact of extractive industries, rate of economic growth, rural development, climatic variability and natural environmental hazard” (Kanayo et al., 2013). This array of challenges must appear daunting for any government to deal with, and it would appear as though it would take a lifetime of effort to make progress against them.

For the sake of illustration, let us take the case of stimulating rural development in the Kachia Grazing reserve of Kaduna State, Northern Nigeria, an impoverished region. The grazing reserve sits on 70,000 Ha and houses about 50,000 semi-nomadic Pastoralist households. Research shows that they depend on income from selling milk to feed their families and pay for most other overheads. It is on the rare occasion they sell an animal to augment. The milk always belongs to the woman of the house (some of the poorest in Nigeria), while the animal typically belongs to the man. Milk yields have been low because among other factors, (1) the local breed of the animal generally is better for beef and not milk production, (2) the animal needs 3 litres of water if it is to produce 1 litre of milk, and accessing water, particularly in the dry season each year, is getting more challenging as a result of climate change, forcing north–south migrations, and (3) quality and volumes of milk from their animals also depends on the quality of feeds and fodder available to them.

Between 2015 and 2019, the Business Innovation Facility—BIF (a UK Department for International Development project) run in Nigeria by young Nigerians designed an intervention for this community. They sought to develop innovations that could be adopted by the Pastoralists that would lead to sustainable improvements in their income and wellbeing. Breed improvement was ruled out though it would have been the most impactful because establishing new crossbreeds would have taken a minimum of 15 years. The provision of water was also ruled out because it required relatively significant investments in infrastructure to achieve. They chose to intervene through improvements to fodder. Their research identified that hybrid Napier grass (related to Elephant grass) rapidly improved milk yields of cattle based on evidence from East Africa. Engaging with the community in the grazing reserve, they imported $160 worth of seedlings which they planted and tended.

After the initial 90 days, the grass was ready. They fed four cows exclusively on the new grass and four on their regular grass. The milk yield of those solely provided with the new grass jumped by 2 litres a day after only two weeks of feeding off a low base of 1 litre per day while there was no change in the others. To be sure, they swapped the feeding regimen and placed those on regular grass on the new grass, and after two weeks, the same result was achieved. At the same prices, revenues per animal tripled. Off one Napier grass seedling planted, over 200 could be harvested, and a secondary market for seedlings developed with the involvement of the youth. Once established, 1 Ha of the new grass could be harvested every 45 days during the rains and could regenerate up to 5 years from the first planting. Whereas 1 Ha of the old grass could support three animals for a year, the new grass supports 15 animals for the year. The women benefited from the milk volume increase.

Without refrigeration, the greater availability of milk could have led to more significant losses. The BIF then trained the women on producing cottage yoghurt, which took the shelf life to 3–5 days instead of several hours. The new process also saved them 20% by volume as their old processes boiled off this volume and damaged the structure of the milk, while the new method used indirect heating without loss of volume or damage to the milk structure. They were also taught proper milk handling and milk hygiene. The raw milk sold for N150/litre but the yoghurt sold initially for N600/litre before the cooperative dropped the price to N300/litre for even more penetration. The improved levels of hygiene and production of a product sought by the larger market in nearby towns encouraged a local investor to partner with the community to set up a mini-processing facility inclusive of a milk collection system run by the youth. Increased product availability brought two distributors from town who took up 4/5th of weekly production while bicycle boys distributed the remainder within the community. The facility has continued to run, and today, Arla, the Danish dairy company, takes milk from the community.

The sum invested by the BIF in the various interventions came to about $25,000. In response, the Kaduna State Government invested in a Napier seedling nursery to replicate the grass to about 80 other communities. They fixed the road leading to the community from the highway. When the interventions started, it took about 50 min to drive the dirt road, but with the improvements done by the State Government, particularly to facilitate off-take, the journey now takes only 15 min.

Practical Lessons

The story of sustainable rural development above can be reduced to seven steps.

  1. 1.

    Innovation: Care was taken to identify the constraints and innovations introduced to overcome the chosen limitations that would not damage the environment nor worsen the situation for the Pastoralists.

  2. 2.

    Incomes: The innovations were explicitly designed to improve revenues and wellbeing.

  3. 3.

    Inclusion: Women, Youth and Men, all sectors of the population, were empowered to contribute to the evolving rural milk economy and share in its benefits.

  4. 4.

    Integration: By training the community on modern milk handling and milk hygiene and showing them a current product that could meet tastes beyond their community, their milk production and processing got integrated into existing value chains.

  5. 5.

    Investment: Private actors seeing the opportunity to scale up what has been set up as a win–win scenario for all actors found it a relatively easy proposition to invest alongside the community.

  6. 6.

    Infrastructure: Contrary to how things are typically done where parties start interventions by investing in infrastructure, the politicians seeing an excellent opportunity to take credit for an emerging success story invested in fixing the road that was years overdue for repairs, to enable off-takers from neighbouring towns access the community relatively easier to evacuate the product. Today, Arla is a significant beneficiary.

  7. 7.

    Institutionalisation: The activities would not have been sustained if BIF had not engaged the community through their cooperatives. This governance structure enabled the community to access markets and investment and continues to be seized until today, three years after the BIF intervention had ceased.

The above suggests that we need to prioritise incomes and productivity to afford our other preferences. In Kachia, the first order of importance to the community was to start a nursery school for their children. The second thing they did with surpluses from the sale of Napier grass seedlings and milk was to create a thrift society. The BIF team was amazed that the first funding application came from one of the youths in the Pastoralist community, and the money he requested was to purchase a computer.

This means for development in Africa, which is blessed with abundant natural resources in practically every community, such inclusive rural development is possible practically everywhere, and growth can happen bottom-up. The steps outlined above can be replicated without running afoul of Africa’s current political economy of governance and development. Off a low base, doubling or tripling the citizen’s income, if done across all sectors, could translate into doubling the GDP of Africa, especially if done on a sustainable basis where no reversals are expected. Like China’s Belt and Roads strategy, Africa needs a new paradigm and approach to stimulating sustainable management practices.

Conclusions and Recommendations

African sustainable development success will be a competitive threat to the rest of the world; failure at it will also threaten the rest of the world. In the first scenario, Africans finally live up to their potential and take their place among the comity of Nations, and in the second, the whole world would have to scramble to find ways to contain Africa. Governments in Africa need to be appraised of the options and encouraged to drive for the first scenario since the second one would inevitably involve death, destruction, or foreign occupation.

There are a number of things that governments would need to do to incorporate a bottom-up approach to sustainable development management across their entire geographies. Governments need to acknowledge the damage that neo-colonisation, elite manipulations, and global capitalism could do to the local economy and minimise it. They need to recognise the disconnect between the people and current approaches to economic growth, the fact that whether they intervene or not, young people continue to innovate their ways and means (and these are not always desirable) and therefore, they need to steer and provide leadership without obstructing this approach to development.

Points to Ponder

  • Can Africa progress without pandering to the dictates of development partners?

  • Can Africa effectively harness its burgeoning youth population or is this part of the resource curse?

  • Are there indigenous success stories we can learn from to spur Africa’s growth?

Actionable Recommendations

Private leadership

Public leadership

Private leaders should work with Governments to establish monitoring and evaluation frameworks and provide investment advisors to work with the micro, small, medium, and large companies to identify the role they could each play in making investments to scale up different aspects of the innovation.

African Governments need to acknowledge that a new paradigm of development planning is needed. They would have to know their territories, the people within them, and the key constraints stopping sustainable income growth.

Private Leaders should work with Governments to identify a package of infrastructure that could help sustain the investments and prepare a strategy for deploying them.

African Governments need to identify and map relevant market systems (provide incentives and impact investment funds) to spur the necessary growth. Communities, the private sector, and all other stakeholders need access to the information and projections of what is possible for anyone innovating new solutions that overcome the constraints.

Private livelihoods extension workers may be needed to play a critical role, with

access to technology and other equipment to facilitate data aggregation and real-time

engagement for development planning, tracking, and reporting purposes.

Policy guidelines should be issued to such pioneers, including the charge that suitable solutions will not damage the environment but generate increased incomes to benefit youth and women. There should be a package of incentives for those whose innovations meet the guidelines.

 

Governments should recognise that this will need joined-up thinking and therefore new roles for public servants and a new way of working. One point of accountability would be required to ensure all the government inputs are adequately dimensioned and coordinated.