Event
Details
Migration and Demography in Sub-Sahara Africa
A panel discussion with
Prof. Stephen Smith and Dr. Jakkie Cilliers
Africa’s population – today 1.3 billion - is predicted to reach 2.5 billion by 2050. Between 10 and 12 million newcomers join the African labor force each year, however the continent creates only 3.7 million jobs annually. For many African youth migration is the only option to realize their professional ambitions. In this context the New York office of Konrad Adenauer Foundation wants to explore the nexus between demography and migration. The two experts Prof. Stephen Smith and Dr. Jakkie Cilliers will present their latest research findings and offer recommendations on how to mitigate poverty and mass migration amplified by population growth. Dr. Jakkie Cilliers, founder of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) highlights that average economic growth rates in Africa are too slow and population growth rates too high to allow the continent to either rapidly reduce poverty or improve average incomes. In his research he analyses the timing and conditions under which African states will achieve a more rapid demographic transition. Stephen Smith, Professor at Duke University argues that mass migration to Europe will occur inevitably. In his book La ruée vers l’Europe (forthcoming as The Scramble for Europe, in April), which has been cited and recommended by French President Emmanuel Macron, Smith models African migration on historical precedents such as the migration of Mexicans to the United States. Dr. Cilliers advocates for Africans to engage candidly and robustly in public discussions and analysis of the economic and developmental implications of the continent’s large youthful population. Professor Smith calls on Europe to cease treating migration as a national challenge in Manichean “good vs. evil” terms. He underscores the importance of burden-sharing and the necessity to regulate migratory flows of unrivaled magnitude.
Tuesday, January 15th 2019 at 12.30 pm
in the News Building (220 East 42nd Street, Suite #3300).
Light lunch will be served.
To RSVP please email newyork@kas.de
Professor Stephen W. Smith has been teaching African Studies at Duke since 2007. Until 2013, he also lectured as an adjunct at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. He holds a PhD in semiotics from Berlin's Free University and graduated in anthropology at the Sorbonne (Panthéon) in Paris. The deputy editor of the foreign desk at Le Monde for five years and, previously, the Africa editor at Libération for twelve years, he had worked as a roving correspondent in West and Central Africa for Reuters news agency and Radio France International (RFI). He is the (co-)author of sixteen books, of country reports (Nigeria, Central African Republic) for the International Crisis Group, and a consultant for the UN and other international bodies. He has widely contributed to many publications and writes regularly for The London Review of Books.
Dr. Jakkie Cilliers is the founder of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), chairman of the ISS Board of Trustees and head of African Futures and Innovation at ISS Pretoria. He is an Extraordinary Professor at the Centre for Human Rights and the Department of Political Sciences, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria, and a well-known author and analyst. At present most of Dr. Cilliers` interests relate to the emerging security architecture in Africa as reflected in the developments under the banner of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union as well as issues around African futures. Dr. Cilliers has presented numerous papers at conferences and seminars and published a number of books on various matters relating to peace and security in Africa and serves on the editorial boards of the African Security Review and the South African Journal of International Affairs.