of the abandonment of cultural revolution era education policies now of course improved education often comes with development meaning the three factors work in cycle better education leads to a lower dependency ratio which leads to faster development which leads to better education and so on and so forth beyond the dividend africa's current demographic status relative to china's can be further corroborated for example the continent's average fertility rate is closest to china's in NUMBER_TOKEN its life expectancy parallels china's in NUMBER_TOKEN infant fatality rate NUMBER_TOKEN and literacy rate NUMBER_TOKEN. looking at this timeline with the addition of the earlier economic indicators two defined clusters appear the demographic indicators and the economic indicators economically africa is in the NUMBER_TOKENs demographically it's in the NUMBER_TOKENs of course there's a big wide world of chance and circumstance out there that can get in the way and this is a narrow way of analyzing economic prospects in the first place but this narrow method does present two primary conclusions first africa is primed for development in all quantifiable ways the continent is in a similar or better position than when china began its period of explosive growth in the NUMBER_TOKENs and NUMBER_TOKENs this isn't to say the growth will inevitably happen but it is to say that there's nothing in the indexes that suggests that the continent on average isn't ready or capable of starting that growth in fact there's everything to suggest that africa is in the exact right situation for a similar manner of growth to start however secondly the gap between economic and demographic indicators should raise red flags it suggests that what's holding growth back if anything is not the economic situation of africa it's the state of the population the indexes are in aggregate headed in the right direction but if african countries want to reap the explosive growth benefits of a demographic dividend they have to concentrate on measures to improve family planning keep more young girls in school and bring more women into the workforce as much as these measures might seem like ones done because it's the right thing to do because improving gender equity is a positive for a country's international image the demographic dividend proves that they cause tangible significant economic effects downstream going back to this cycle better education causing lower dependency ratios causing faster development what is the easiest phase in the cycle to effect a country can't just speed up development by itself that's the end goal but not a factor that a country can directly manipulate dependency ratios are easier for a country to affect but measures like china's one child policy are viewed as draconian and often difficult to implement voluntary family planning programs have seen success in certain countries but are undoubtedly complex the easiest phase in this cycle to manipulate is education because by its very nature it's something that the country's government manages the demographic dividend isn't some silver bullet for explosive development rather it's one small yet powerful example of the merits of investing in people it's an example backing up the suggestion that africa's economies should not be focusing all their attention on juicing foreign direct investment inflows by courting superpowers for development projects for example that's important but so is just getting kids in school getting households hooked up to electricity getting people to participate in elections improving people's quality of life matters far beyond just quality of life so is africa the next china well probably not despite the parallels china is made up of one country africa NUMBER_TOKEN. china got things right once africa is unlikely to get things right NUMBER_TOKEN times the data suggests that in aggregate the conditions are ripe
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