President John Mahama has cautioned African leaders not to rely on manufacturing and agriculture alone to solve the continent’s unemployment crisis.

Speaking at the Private-Public Business Dialogue at the ongoing 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IX) on Thursday, he urged urgent investment in the creative and digital sectors to absorb Africa’s growing youth population.

“The youth form 60%. If you take the age category of between 16 and 35, they form 60% of Africa’s population. And so that’s not a demographic you can ignore. But aside from that, the world is changing, and it’s now a knowledge economy,” he said.

President Mahama argued that young Africans are looking beyond traditional employment paths.

“The youth are interested in certain sectors that are not the traditional sectors, and so in the creatives, in the renewable energy space, even if they go for traditional sectors like agriculture, they are looking at agrictech and other knowledge-driven aspects of those traditional sectors.

"And so it is important to find where their interests are and invest in those sectors so that you can attract the youth to go into those sectors.”

Citing recent investment trends, he pointed to the rapid rise of startups.

“Now, if you look at Africa in 2024, there was about an investment of 4.2 billion in startups, and a lot of that went into the biggest majority, about 45%, which went into fintechs.

"The FinTech space is growing at an astronomical rate in Africa, and it’s mainly driven by smart, tech-savvy youth who have seen openings and are taking advantage of them. In all our countries, a change in the economic structure is happening.

"For instance, in Ghana, in about 2015, the services sector overtook agriculture and industry and manufacturing to become the largest sector in our economy. And that’s how it should be.”

President Mahama shared an example of a Ghanaian fintech innovation he described as transformative.

“I met the fintech groups, and one of the interesting ones I found was an agri-tech company, and it was solving a problem that we’ve been struggling with as a government for many years: how to extend credit and support to farmers so that they can increase productivity.

"We had a shot in the dark approach, distributing fertilisers, distributing inputs and so on, and you couldn’t tell who exactly those inputs were going to and whether you were getting value for money.

"These young people set up the fintech, they set up a platform, they gave mobile phones to farmers, they distributed the agricultural inputs to the farmers based on their acreage and their need, and based on the fact that they had them on the platform, they could send credit to them by mobile money, and at the end of the farming season, go directly to the farmer and off take the production.

"And that changed it completely. The farmers are able to get a credit score now, and so you can see who’s creditworthy and who’s not. And so it’s changed the face of agriculture. It’s changing the face of agriculture in our country.”

He stressed that non-traditional sectors are proving to be faster job creators.

“Apart from that, the creative sector and youth startups are adding jobs faster than the traditional sectors.

"And so if you take the creatives, renewable energy and those spaces, they add about four jobs before you can create one job in agriculture or manufacturing.

"And so investing in that sector means that we can absorb more of the myriad of young people who are coming out of school.”

President Mahama warned that the pace of job creation in manufacturing and agriculture cannot match Africa’s urgent needs.

“If we decide to concentrate on manufacturing and industry, Africa needs to create about 12 to 15 million jobs a year. You cannot create that in manufacturing and industry, and agriculture alone.

"But the rate at which the creatives and digital space add jobs is much faster than the traditional economy. So it’s a place that we must invest as governments so that we can absorb more of the youth.”

He concluded with a warning about the risks of failing to adapt.

“We know that we say the youth bulge, or the huge youth population in Africa, is an advantage. But if we do not create enough jobs fast enough to absorb those young people coming out, then it will become a gunpowder keg, and it could cost us.”