While in no way assured, Africa may be poised to reap the benefits of a ‘demographic dividend’ in the coming decades as its young and increasingly affluent citizenry expands to number two-billion, the equivalent of one-fifth of the world's population by 2050.

In a series of reports, Standard Bank African political economy unit senior analyst Simon Freemantle has identified this anticipated surge in Africa’s population as one of five key trends that could improve the continent’s “allure” over the medium term.

The other four themes highlighted in the research papers include rising and rapid urbanisation, the adoption and absorption of new technologies, the continued unlocking of abundant mineral and agricultural resources and the deepening of the continent’s financial sector.

But coupled with robust economic growth, population growth could play a particularly “potent” role in supporting the emergence of the continent‘s consumer base. Africa’s youthful population, meanwhile, has the potential to yield a demographic dividend similar to that currently being experienced in countries such as China.

A convergence of falling fertility rates and improved healthcare could also lower dependency ratios, or the proportion of the population that is either too young or too old to work.

Since 2000, the continent’s population has expanded by 200-million and currently exceeds 1-billion. In addition, the median age of 19.7 in Africa compares favourably with the median age of 32 for citizens living in the ‘Brics countries’ of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

In fact, Standard Bank calculates that Africa’s “youthful bulge” may expand the continent’s workforce to 1.2-billion by 2050, which will mean that one in four global workers will be African, compared with one in eight from China by that date.

In such a context, Africa‘s services and manufacturing sectors will be stimulated, “fundamentally altering” the prospects of select economies on the continent.

However, Freemantle cautions that such a dividend is far from a certainty and will flow only if a number of preconditions are met. “Institutions must be strong, or at least improving, and education levels and healthcare elevated. Political and economic freedoms must also be supportive,” he asserts.

A failure of the political authorities to set in place conditions to ensure that young people find gainful, formal employment could be a recipe of greater instability and even political uprisings, which will undermine Africa’s growth and development prospects.

“Seen from within the sphere of economic theory, a rising, and youthful population, when balanced by generally positive economic growth, carries potentially potent benefits for those countries with the structural means to support a bulging populace. Yet, equally, in the absence of such supporting factors, population growth has the ability to be profoundly destabilizing,” Freemantle concludes.