Africanistan

In Africa, progress can be seen across the board. Yet is this upturn sustainable? And is it comprehensive enough? Every day, migrants are dying in the Mediterranean. Should we really believe that all is well?
The continent is in fact a powder keg. The powder is demographics. And the detonator is unemployment. By 2050, the number of young people of working age in Africa will be three times that of China's. What jobs will be available? What is troubling for the continent is even more dramatic for the Sahel, a huge region of about 100 million inhabitants where insecurity is spreading like a bushfire.
The mass unemployment of young people, far more than jihadist propaganda, is the primary explanation for the dramatic collapse of Afghanistan. Despite major differences in geography and culture, there are huge similarities between the Sahel and Afghanistan: a demographic impasse, stagnating agriculture, widespread rural misery, high unemployment, deep ethnic and religious fault lines, weak states, regional instability, drug trafficking, and the spread of radical Islam.