South Africa’s G20 presidency comes to an end at a time when Africa faces a period in which global realignment, domestic financial reforms, and intensifying youth demands collide to shape the continent’s future trajectory.
The G20’s Task Force One on Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialisation, Employment and Reduced Inequality underscores the urgency of translating growth into broad-based employment. While recent growth has produced jobs, high informality, weak social protections, and persistent gender and youth labour-market gaps mirror continental realities where new jobs remain precarious, leaving young Africans most exposed.
Skills mismatches further constrain the continent’s ability to harness its projected 2050 labour-force advantage.This is particularly salient as the G20 South Africa: Leaders’ Declaration has committed to supporting AI and digital capacity development in Africa, thus recognising that access to technology, skills, and infrastructure will shape future employment pathways and productivity growth. Notably, G20 commitments on economic stability and inclusive growth will matter only if they unlock capital, expand decent job creation, and strengthen labour-market institutions capable of reducing vulnerability at scale.
Africa stands at a crossroads of credible domestic resource mobilisation and rising uncertainty over whether these reforms will deliver real economic dividends. On one hand, the continent has secured notable governance and financial credibility gains.
The removal of South Africa, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list marks a significant milestone. As two of the continent’s largest economies exit the list, the signal to global markets is that African regulatory systems are strengthening and investor confidence is returning.
This provides a critical pathway to mobilise domestic capital, support decent employment, and stimulate what the Institute for Security Studies notes as Africa’s projected U.S. $16 trillion continental economy by 2050, with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as a major contributor to this acceleration.
On the other hand, positive developments unfold against intensifying public demand for accountability and economic dividends. African citizens are navigating an environment shaped by geopolitical volatility, widening debt distress, and geoeconomic realignment, which are all pressures that continue to test the continent’s resilience.
Citizen concerns are centred on livelihoods, employment, and the rising cost of living, while the continental skills mismatch remains a key driver of persistent youth unemployment. This reflects longstanding data from the 2018 Ibrahim Index of African Governance.
Evidence of citizen priorities
Understanding how citizens experience economic conditions is essential to grounding the G20 agenda in lived realities. Afrobarometer Round 10 (2024/2025) data highlight a foundational truth: Macroeconomic stability has little political traction unless it improves the everyday economic conditions of ordinary Africans.
The data show that many young Africans do not perceive meaningful progress in job creation, inequality reduction, or economic stability. Instead, they experience a persistent divide between macro-level reforms and lived economic realities, underscoring the urgency of people-centred, employment-driven strategies if the South African G20 advocacy for economic stability, job creation, inequality reduction, and small- and medium-enterprise (SME) development is to be meaningfully actioned.
Across the continent, unemployment remains one of the most pressing political and economic issues. Young citizens identify joblessness (36%) as a top priority that governments must urgently address – second only to health (37%) and rising from 33% in Round 9 (2021/2023). Perceptions of government performance reflect these anxieties, with only 23% of Africans believing their governments are handling job creation “fairly well” or “very well.”
Further, a majority of Africans experienced moderate or high deprivation of basic necessities in the past year, underscoring how fragile household economies remain even where macroeconomic reforms are underway. This reinforces the disconnect between macro conditions and daily life. When asked where governments should increase spending to support youth, respondents prioritise job creation (48%), followed by education (16%) and job training (14%) (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Priorities for additional government investment to help youth | 38 African countries | 2024/2025
Respondents were asked: If the government could increase its spending on programmes to help young people, which of the following areas do you think should be the highest priority for additional investment?
Barriers to young people’s entry into the labour market also reveal that the efficacy of financial or regulatory reform will only be felt once it translates into financing for human-capital development, effective skills pipelines, and labour-market absorption pathways.
The 18-35 demographic represents the cohort most exposed to the continent’s economic instability. Though they possess the highest levels of education of all age groups (Figure 2), with 68% having at least some secondary school compared to 55% of adults aged 36-45, these educational gains have not translated into meaningful employment.
A staggering 43% of African youth surveyed across 38 countries are unemployed and actively seeking work (compared to 25% in the 46- 55 age cohort), revealing a structural generational crisis rather than a temporary labour shock (Figure 3).
More than 121 million young Africans are not in education, employment, or training. This deepens vulnerability, undermines human-capital formation, and limits the continent’s ability to convert its demographic growth into productive capacity.
School-completion rates illustrate the depth of this challenge: Sub-Saharan Africa’s lower- secondary completion rate stands at 43.8% compared to 75.9% globally, and upper secondary at 26.3% compared to 56.8%.
Young Africans cite four capability barriers:
Lack of adequate training or preparation (27%)
Lack of practical experience (20%)
Their unwillingness to work in certain jobs (e.g. in agriculture or difficult jobs) (15%)
Mismatch between education and labour-market needs (14%)
Figure 2: Educational attainment | by age group | 38 African countries | 2024/2025
Respondents were asked: What is your highest level of education?
Figure 3: Employment status| by age group | 38 African countries | 2024/2025
Respondents were asked: Do you have a job that pays a cash income? [If yes:] Is it full time or part time? [If no:] Are you currently looking for a job?
These barriers constrain entry into productive sectors, reinforce reliance on informal work, and block upward mobility. It is therefore unsurprising that more than three-fourths of young Africans would prefer to start their own businesses (52%) or work in the public sector (25%) – a reflection of weak private-sector absorption and the scarcity of secure, decent jobs. These constraints are also reflected in migration considerations: Among young Africans who have thought about emigrating, 52% say it would be to find work or better job opportunities, while 27% would do so to escape poverty or economic hardship, further underscoring the depth of exclusion experienced across labour markets.
Systemic exclusion driven by unemployment, capability barriers, and limited upward mobility fuels out-migration aspirations, particularly among those with higher education and skills precisely the demographic essential for future productivity and governance stability.
This buttresses the urgency of translating G20 commitments into concrete domestic employment strategies capable of reducing vulnerability at scale. Commitment Point 37 of the G20 South Africa Summit: Leaders' Declaration reinforces this citizen-centred perspective by affirming that employment is a central objective of economic growth and that decent jobs must sit at the core of sustainable industrialisation.
Importantly, it emphasises the role of robust labour institutions, fair wage-setting mechanisms, and universal and adaptive social protection in reducing inequality and building resilience. This mirrors Afrobarometer evidence that young Africans are not only demanding jobs, but jobs that provide stability, protection, and pathways out of precarity.
The data are clear: Unemployment is a top political and economic priority – ahead of governance or cost-of-living concerns – and job creation is the highest-demand area for government spending. Recent commitments in the G20 Ministerial Declaration on Debt Sustainability reinforce this perspective.
The statement emphasises that debt sustainability is inseparable from social development and financial stability, calling for strengthened institutions, transparency, equitable burden-sharing, and debt strategies that prioritise skills development, SME productivity, and innovation ecosystems.
These priorities echo the G20’s commitments, underscoring that restoring financial credibility must translate into expanded fiscal space for targeted socio-economic resilience building.
Debt, fiscal space, and the macroeconomic constraints ahead
These prioritised demands collide with the reality of tightening fiscal space and mounting debt obligations. Point 14 of the G20 South Africa Summit: Leaders; Declaration recognises that high debt burdens limit fiscal space and directly undermine governments’ ability to invest in education, health, infrastructure, and inequality reduction – pressures noted as particularly acute for African countries.
By framing debt sustainability as inseparable from development outcomes, the declaration reinforces the argument that restoring macroeconomic credibility must be judged by whether it enables social investment and job creation, rather than by debt metrics alone.
In this sense, debt relief is not merely a financial adjustment but a precondition for responding to the economic priorities African citizens consistently articulate. As ONE Data notes, current debt-relief efforts have yielded minimal progress, cutting high-risk external debt by only 7% across lower-income economies.
More than half of African countries are in or at high risk of debt distress, with 32 now spending more on external debt than on health care, and 25 spending more on debt than on education.
Major economies such as Kenya (U.S. $36 billion), Ghana (U.S. $15 billion), Zambia (U.S. $10.3 billion), Mozambique (U.S. $9.6 billion), Cameroon (U.S.$11.2 billion), and Ethiopia (U.S. $16.5 billion) remain heavily burdened, despite attempts to engage global debt- relief mechanisms.
Under the G20 Common Framework created in 2020, only Ghana and Zambia have secured tangible relief, at U.S. $9.3 billion and U.S. $4.3 billion, respectively, while others, such as Chad and Ethiopia, have seen little to no progress. With Africa’s total debt stocks having more than doubled in the past decade, and an estimated U.S. $89 billion in debt-service payments due in 2025 – surpassing the continent’s total development assistance – the findings underscore the unsustainability of current fiscal trajectories.
There is then a need for urgent reform of the Common Framework, replenishment of International Monetary Fund and World Bank relief facilities, and stronger legal mechanisms to deter hold-out creditors, as restoring fiscal space is essential to protecting social investment, economic resilience, and human development.
Here, the Cost of Capital Commission is a welcome proposal as Africa continues to do its part in building regulatory trust. Lobby efforts drawing from the momentum of South Africa’s G20 presidency would thus do well to consolidate this momentum into coordinated advocacy for fairer debt workouts, deeper creditor cooperation, and a financing architecture that prioritises development outcomes over repayment rigidity.
Doing so will determine whether Africa’s demographic ascent becomes a foundation for global stability or a fault line of future inequality.
Structural inequality and global transitions
Beyond immediate fiscal pressures, Africa’s inequality crisis cannot be separated from the deep structural transitions shaping its future as rapid demographic expansion, skills deficits, technological disruption, climate pressures, and tightening fiscal space converge to intensify youth exclusion and entrench global wealth divides.
As the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality Report argues, inequality has itself become a systemic macroeconomic risk that depresses productivity, undermines fiscal stability, and erodes democratic governance.
Over the next decade, the report further warns that U.S. $70 trillion in wealth will be transferred across generations, overwhelmingly within the richest households.
This consolidation of global wealth is not only reproducing elite continuity but also constraining social mobility precisely at the moment when Africa needs expanded fiscal room, productive capacity, and technological adaptation.
The structural advantages of the global wealthy – access to capital, digital infrastructure, political influence, quality education, and unrestricted mobility – are compounding at a time when many African economies face declining fiscal buffers, rising debt-service ratios, and heightened exposure to external shocks.
The report’s emphasis on inequality enables African states to reframe economic stability as a people-centred agenda by legitimising increased investment in skills, education, and productive capabilities as macro-stability interventions; strengthening domestic political legitimacy at a time of heightened citizen demand for accountability and economic dividends; and linking restored financial credibility to targeted human-centred transformation.
This includes building innovation ecosystems, upgrading informal enterprises, supporting regional industrialisation under the AfCFTA, and ensuring that emerging fiscal space is channelled into capabilities that directly address differentiated vulnerabilities across Africa’s populations.
With the continent projected to hold 25% of the world’s labour force by 2050, the absence of effective upskilling, work-integrated learning pipelines, and labour protections threatens to convert the demographic opportunity into a source of global instability rather than of sustainable developmental progress. Capability barriers already reflect these risks.
As automation and AI alter labour intensive growth pathways, as the fiscal space continues to be eroded by the debt crisis, and as climate shocks reshape settlement patterns and rural-urban livelihoods, the absence of anticipatory governance will heighten concentration of opportunity in already advantaged groups – thus self-perpetuating global inequality.
Recognising these structural headwinds provides African states with strategic leverage and validates policy urgency. At the global level, it strengthens Africa’s case for reforms on tax justice, technology transfer, climate finance, and fairer debt restructuring.
At the domestic level, it underscores the necessity of investing in human capital, labour-market institutions, and innovation ecosystems that can absorb a young population at scale. Without stronger equilibrating forces – including access to quality education, effective worker protections, and industrial strategies that raise productivity – widening inequality will undermine macroeconomic stability, depress long-term growth, and erode democratic governance.
For Africa, this means that restoring financial credibility through FATF delistings or fiscal reforms is only meaningful if it releases capital to finance tangible capability building, job creation, and protections that reduce vulnerability across labour markets.
The financing of decent work, fair wages, and secure livelihoods is therefore not only a social imperative but a foundational condition for reducing inequality and safeguarding inclusive economic stability. African citizens have already made these priorities unmistakably clear.
The task ahead is to translate fiscal reforms into negotiated outcomes that protect the livelihoods and long-term prospects of the demographic most essential to Africa’s economic future.
The views expressed on this platform are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Afrobarometer positions.