'India-Africa must make most of demographic dividend'

Chandigarh, June 11 : India and Africa must leverage their strengths to make the most of their demographic dividend, a leading South African educationist says.

"India and Africa are working on making the most of their demographic dividend. However, countries in Africa and India have to learn from each other and work together to ensure that we draw the maximum benefits out of this," said Jonathan Cook, executive director of South Africa's Gordon Institute of Business Science, who is leading an Association of African Business Schools (AABS) delegation to India.

At an interactive session here, AABS members pledged their support to INDIAFRICA: A Shared Future, a unique people-to-people contact and youth outreach programme being run by theIdeaWorks, a New Delhi based communication design and strategy firm, with support from the Public Diplomacy Division of the external affairs ministry.

INDIAFRICA: A Shared Future comprises of a series of poster design, photography, essay writing and business venture contests for African and India youth; and a Young Visionaries Fellowship Programme that aims to identify young entrepreneurs who can come up with unique and collaborative business ideas from both regions to interact and work with each other.

Hyderabad's Indian School of Business and the Lagos Business School are the institutional partners for the INDIAFRICA Business Venture Competition. The interactive session was organised in co-operation with Indian School of Business, Mohali campus.

Speaking on the occasion, Edward Mungai, dean of Kenya's Strathmore Business School, said: "The success of the INDIAFRICA initiative will depend on successfully building and managing networks to enable sharing of knowledge and best practices and collaborative entrepreneurship between African countries and India"

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