As the challenges confronting states become increasingly complex, the nationbuilding process must become more inclusive and diverse. The way actors are engaged and the kinds of actors engaged must reflect the realities imposed by these challenges to make the structures created around our collective responses inherently resilient. Addressing unemployment, migration and poverty and facilitating access to basic services are key building blocks of national development. Yet, sometimes, their attainment is hindered by the very power structures intended to frame those processes due to a failure to maximise the use of available resources.

The population bulge across Africa, specifically within the demographic most relevant for the labour force, that is, 15-to 35-year-olds, has pushed governments beyond deliberating over the potential existence of a dividend to be earned from this growth, to assessing how the dividend can be harnessed (African Union, 2017). Responses by governments have varied across countries, ranging from science and technology–linked interventions and policy-making, to increasing investments in skills and capacity-building programmes, most notably through entrepreneurship support (African Union, 2017).

Yet, given the annual shortage of seven million jobs across Africa, the current responses are failing to meet this demand for youth entering the workforce (AfDB, 2016). Harnessing the demographic dividend must go hand in hand with managing the sustainability of the growth within the youth demographic, because the ramifications of their joblessness are trans-generational. Furthermore, it affects coordination on the core building blocks already mentioned as part of the nation-building process. Several factors can potentially explain this politico-economic failure, and this chapter explores the human capital aspect of the debate around the demographic dividend, with a focus on the Gambia and a key actor in its diaspora as a change agent.

Due to their remoteness perhaps, it is easy to omit diaspora groups when considering the human capital base of countries. Often, this is linked to the kind of relationship that diasporas share with their home governments. However, regardless of that assessment, diaspora groups continue to be a major contributor to nation-building across developing countries (Migration Policy, 2018). Investments, family ties and religious and sociocultural ties all contribute to maintaining such relationships, which can also be severed for political and security reasons and vice versa.