To provide jobs for more than a billion Africans, sub-Saharan Africa will need to unite around a common projectproject

According to the World Bank, 620 million people will be added to the working-age population in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. But growth is weak, informal employment is widespread, and extreme poverty is endemic. To meet this major African challenge of the 21st century, unity around a comprehensive and structured plan will be needed to convince international public and private investors.By Francis Journot, November 20, 2025

“To create jobs on a large scale, structural change is needed.”

In the World Bank report published in October 2025, "the pace of growth remains too slow to significantly reduce extreme poverty and to create enough good-quality jobs to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding workforce. Africa is undergoing a demographic transformation of a scale and speed unmatched anywhere else in the world. To capitalize on this asset, countries must promote accelerated growth that creates good jobs."

The World Bank's Chief Economist for Africa, Andrew Dabalen, added, “Over the next 25 years, the working-age population will increase by more than 600 million people. However, only 24% of new workers currently have access to salaried employment. To create jobs on a large scale, structural change is needed in favor of medium and large enterprises.” The bank, which wrote in 2018 that “the region could be home to 90% of the world's extreme poverty in 2050,” is therefore fully aware of the situation, and one can only agree with its analysis.

It is therefore necessary to learn from the failure of disorderly and siloed development aid policy (ODA). Despite spending $2 trillion over 60 years in sub-Saharan Africa, the risk of humanitarian chaos is greater than ever. We can agree with the World Bank's observation that structural change is needed to create jobs on a large scale. But this will require the implementation of a pragmatic plan for the future, capable of uniting the populations and states of the region. This is the aim of the United States of Sub-Saharan Africa (USSA) program.

The United States of Sub-Saharan Africa (USSA) project

The systemic dimension of the project promotes the construction of a financial architecture whose rigor and credibility will generate the influx of public and private capital needed to implement the industrialization program in sub-Saharan Africa. Cooperation with industrial companies, often international and possessing know-how and technologies, will thus enable the region to be industrialized within two decades.

This strategy will transform informal jobs and broaden the tax base. With more structured medium and large enterprises, states will be better able to finance their public services and infrastructure. They will gradually break out of the vicious circle of dependence on ODA and be better able to assert their sovereignty.

The holistic approach of this program, which is concerned with the general interest, simultaneously integrates the human and social dimensions of development. It will facilitate the emergence of a new social contract desired by the populations by coordinating economic investment and land use planning. Business parks and new cities will have nearby public services, including health and education, but the entire population will ultimately benefit from this modernization. Industrialization and economic development, reduction of unemployment, new prospects and alternatives to exile, sovereignty, infrastructure: the project is aligned with the deep aspirations of African youth.

Unrest and aggression towards the states and peoples of sub-Saharan Africa are on the rise, but the African Union (AU) is confining itself to an observational role without any real means or power. New economic activity and the spread of industrial value chains among nations now driven by the same interests around a common goal, as well as the pooling of security forces developed by dozens of states, will together constitute a factor of regional cohesion capable of easing tensions and saving many innocent lives.

Francis Journot is a consultant and entrepreneur. He is the founder of the projects United States of Sub-Saharan Africa (EUAS or USSA), International Convention for a Global Minimum Wage, Collectivité Nationale, and Program for the Industrialization of Africa .