President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has announced a $100 million commitment towards the creation of the Nigerian Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank, aimed at catalysing $2 billion in investments to support over 38,000 youth-led businesses across Africa.
Adesina made the announcement during a televised interview on national television, noting that the initiative is part of the AfDB’s wider strategy to harness the continent’s youth population—over 465 million people aged 15 to 35—as a powerful economic engine.
He also expressed concern over the growing trend of youth emigration from Nigeria and other African nations, commonly referred to as the Japa phenomenon.
Adesina described it as a “big loss” for the continent and a sign of the failure to adequately invest in the potential of Africa’s young people.
“Young people don’t need freebies,” Adesina declared.
“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.”
According to the former Nigerian agriculture minister, Africa’s youth crisis is not one of numbers, but of opportunity.
“We have over 465 million young people between the ages of 15 and 35,” he said.
“The problem is not their population, it is what you do with your population; how you skill them up.”
Adesina argued that the exodus of young Africans to Europe, North America, and Asia is the result of 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.”
In response, the AfDB, he revealed, has launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Development Bank, specifically designed 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,” Adesina revealed.
“The goal is to mobilise $2 billion of investment for more than 38,000 businesses of young people in Africa.”
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He criticised traditional empowerment schemes that hand out small stipends, arguing that such approaches are 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?”
For Adesina, the stakes are high. He 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,” he cautioned. “We have to put our money behind our young people to create opportunities for them.”
He concluded with a passionate call for belief and investment in Africa’s future: “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.”