Spent my day today doing what I love to do: Talking entrepreneurship and investment in frontier markets with the students, faculty and president of Belmont University in the heart of beautiful Nashville, Tennessee.

Nashville is more than just America’s music city. It’s a bustling metropole with many of its poor neighborhoods undergoing rapid gentrification. In 2022 it had a daily average of 300 migrants, and it’s healthcare industry is bigger than any other city in the country.

Reminds me of home. No other continent is urbanizing faster than Africa. It took Europe 110 years to have a bare 15 percent of its population that was living in towns to grow to a paltry 40 percent by 1910. Africa has easily achieved achieved this feat in 60 short years (1950-2010) – almost half the time.

And at 1.4 billion people now, the world’s population is heading towards an African majority. With 18 percent of the world’s people in 2023 (twice the number in Europe), Africa is the world’s youngest continent with over 70 percent of its population under the age of 35. By 2100, Africa’s youth will represent almost half of the world’s youth population.

Question is: How can we leverage this demographic dividend?