20151224 - europe/africa

Europe’s grand challenge – Africa’s future

 

 

Africa’s population will be five times Europe’s by mid-century. Will the continent become a permanent source of desperate migrants, or a fabulous investment opportunity? Europe needs to engage, massively.
The wave of migrants coming into Europe at the moment has a proximate cause – sectarian war and chaos in the Middle East – but it isn’t a transient phenomenon. The current migration is just the beginning of a long-term trend that will almost certainly last for at least a hundred years.
The reason: Over that time-period, Africa’s population is set to go from 1.16 billion today – exactly twice that of the European Union – to 2.4 billion by 2050. That’s five times the EU’s current population of 508 million. By 2100, according to the UN, Africa’s population could be 4.2 billion – eight times that of today’s EU.
The arc of Muslim countries from North Africa and the Middle East through South and Central Asia is also in the midst of a demographic explosion. According to Pew Research Center, the world’s Muslim population will grow from 1.6 billion today to 2.8 billion by 2050.
If the Muslim world and Africa remain plagued by war, chaos, misrule, failed states and poverty – exacerbated by resource competition worsened by climate destabilisation, food and water insecurity – nothing and no-one will be able to hold back the flood of desperate refugees...................

 http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2015/09/14/opinion-europes-grand-challenge-africas-future/
 http://europafrica.net/earn/