Washington - The deaths of hundreds of migrants fleeing north Africa by sea this year highlights their desperation and the failure of African governments to provide training and education for their young people, billionaire philanthropist Mo Ibrahim said.
Up to 900 people were feared dead after their boat sank on its way to Europe from Libya at the weekend, including many women and children locked below deck.
In total, about 1 800 migrants are reported to have died in the Mediterranean so far this year compared with fewer than 100 in the same period last year, the UN refugee agency says.
Ibrahim, a Sudanese telecoms tycoon, told the Global Philanthropy Forum on Wednesday that more Africans would leave the continent unless their governments did more to help the 20 million youngsters entering the job market each year.
“It will drive people to their deaths in the middle of the Mediterranean or violence in the streets unless we do something about it,” Ibrahim told the Forum, which brings together donors and investors.
“If we fail to train our kids for jobs of the future, we are in for a terrible, terrible future,” he said.
Roughly half of Africa's 1 billion population is under the age of 19 with unemployment rates equally high, Ibrahim said.
Seventy percent of Africans make a living from agriculture, yet only 2 percent of university students study agricultural sciences, needed to improve land productivity and reduce hunger in Africa, he added.
Ibrahim, whose foundation publishes an index on African governance and rewards outstanding African leaders, said it was wrong to cast Africa as a centre of corruption and poor governance - problems that were global.
The chief executive of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, his daughter Hadeel Ibrahim, said illicit financial flows and tax evasion sucked billions of dollars out of Africa each year, far more money than arrives as development aid.
More than 60 percent of that money is taken not through corruption but through corporate trade mispricing including by multinationals, she said.
“All this aid you are giving us, when you are taking out an awful lot and throwing us back pennies,” she told the Forum, urging a frank conversation about international finance and aid.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim also told the Forum that illicit finance that robs developing countries of revenues was an issue that deserved more attention.
Reuters