There is good news for young Nigerians with viable business plans – they can now draw from the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank established by the African Development Bank (AfDB).
The AfDB is committing $100 million for the establishment of bank, its President, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina said yesterday.
According to the AfDB boss, the intervention is part of the $2 billion investments being mobilised by the bank to support over 38,000 youth-led businesses across Africa.
The initiative, he said, is part of the bank’s broader strategy to transform over 465 million people (under 35 years), into a driving economic force.
Adesina, who spoke on a cable television monitored by our reporters, condemned the Exodus of youths from Nigeria and other African countries (known in popular parlance as Japa phenomenon).
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He described it as a “big loss” for the continent and a symptom of systemic failure to invest in young people.
The AfDB boss said: “Young people don’t need freebies. They don’t need people saying: ‘I just want to give you an empowerment programme’.
“They have skills; they have knowledge; they have entrepreneurship capacity; they want to turn their ideas into great businesses.”
The one-time Agriculture minister noted that Africa’s youth crisis was not one of numbers, but of opportunity.
He said: “We have over 465 million young people between the ages of 15 and 35. The problem is not their population, it is what you do with your population; how you skill them up.”
Adesina blamed the emigration of young Africans to Europe, North America and Asia on a financial system that neglects them.
“The whole of the (banking) system is not designed for young people,” he lamented. The commercial banking system and the financial system failed young people in Africa. Why is it suddenly a surprise to us that they are leaving? It’s because you are not putting anything down for them,” he noted.
He explained that the AfDB has launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Development Bank, specifically to provide access to capital for young Africans with viable business plans.
The newly-approved Nigerian Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank, he noted, is the first such effort under this initiative.
“We just approved $100 million to set up the Nigerian Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank. The goal is to mobilise $2 billion of investment for more than 38,000 businesses of young people in Africa,” Adesina said.
Faulting the traditional handouts of small stipends in the name of empowerment schemes, Adesina argued that such approaches have been ineffective in unlocking long-term potential.
He said: “They don’t need N5,000 or 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? Where are you going to get the capital mobilisation in the future?”
Adesina warned that failing to convert Africa’s youth into economic contributors, risks turning the continent’s greatest asset into a liability.
“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.”
Calling for belief and investment in Africa’s future, he said: “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, robustly, and able to create quality jobs for our young people.”