In Africa, in an interconnected, interdependent world, the mismatching
of needs, resources, opportunities, competition and accountability is
undermining the perceived value of education, of labor markets which cannot
absorb the vast pools of skilled and unskilled labor, of social infrastructures
which cannot at present maximize the multifaceted resources of human capital.
Inequality of access and value-of-outcome for individual, or group, efforts and
achievements very often lead to financial hardship, gender-based deprivation,
perceived/actual disenfranchisement, crime, violence, and larger conflicts.
Technologies in communication, transit, cloud-based information storage
and sharing are providing unprecedented opportunities for growth in the
knowledge capital of humanity. In previous centuries, humanity experienced the
pseudo-sustainability of growth with the advancement and enrichment of a
sheltered upper class, with acceptable numbers of jobs for uneducated,
semi-skilled and skilled laborers. In the 21st Century, however, the
increasing millions of educated young people eager to apply their talents and
skills to forge lives for themselves have clearly demonstrated that neither
private nor public sector employment landscapes provide adequate opportunity, compensation,
the attainment of life-goals.
Social infrastructures, regardless of climate, location, or resources,
depend upon the investment of participants, individually and as communities, to
endure. Poor outcomes which commence with gender-based discrimination leading
to early child-birth, low-parental education and wealth, poor nutrition,
geographic factors of exclusion-by-circumstance are reinforced by the
disparities in the next generation of children’s education, and the
improbability or even impossibility of obtaining a well-paid job—causing
productivity levels and dependency levels to become progressively imbalanced.
Social structures are straining under ever-increasing populations of
job-seekers, ever-increasing deficits of funding, and the double-sided swords
of instant communication and transit technologies. While communities, states
and nations should be building social and economic infrastructures which
amplify the rights, and the responsibilities of an interdependent human
species, inequality of opportunity continues to exacerbate the poor outcomes of
the non-privileged.
Clear expectations of recompense-for-effort are reinforced by media and
crowd influences, yet equitable, durable opportunities for educational,
economic, environmental, energy and ethical (“universal” freedoms and rights)
security are ever-more threatened. At a time crucial to the development of
human responsibility and investment in a sustainable, interdependent world,
poverty of outcomes is impoverishing, endangering the future of our species on
this planet.
From the very start, impoverishments of circumstances affect each
child’s probability of receiving adequate healthcare, nutritional, and
educational services to succeed in life. Almost inescapably, these same
circumstances and subsequent poor outcomes affect the ability of the working
generation to support themselves, their children, and their elderly.
Opportunities for education and hiring based upon connections, rather than
merits, undermine the whole process of building human capital, and evolving
from a top-heavy distribution of wealth, resources, power, and access, to a
more equitable, merit-based, sustainable assumption of responsibility and
recompense.
Investment in dynamic, strategic employment and social infrastructures
is essential to impartial, merit-based hiring, to widening access for qualified
enterprises and individuals. Investment opportunities to encourage the increase
of businesses and agencies which look beyond regional and sectarian
considerations, which work together to conserve limited finite resources while
maximizing the potential of renewable resource utilization would strengthen
infrastructures, and encourage new ideas, and new markets for services created,
offered, and utilized.
In an overhauling of current collateral regimes of protectionism and
creditor rights at the expense of small-investors, wage-earners, and
subsistence- or poverty-line laborers, increased understanding of the economy
of needs, rather than wants, reflects a richness of social fabric, rather than
a paucity of empty promises.
The concept of serendipitous beneficiaries, of responsible development
which considers the interconnectedness of humankind, of other earth species, of
limited finite resources, global-renewable resources, and potential for
sustainability, is crucial to the “greening” of markets, services, and human
occupations today. Value-adding serendipitous beneficiaries to the associated/collateral choices and activities of market-share providers of goods and services enables citizen-consumers to make responsible choices themselves, empowering those enterprises ensuring "green," sustainable practices.
For example, in many nations, young people, unable to find adequate
employment in their “home” communities, regions, or nations, tend to leave,
congregating in urban centers where they hope to find paying jobs. This leaves
the parent-generations cope, alone, with aging grandparents. In nations where
poverty and tradition caused young girls to be married to men three and four
times their age, this “flight” of the young generation leaves many, many older
women, without adequate education or job skills, without financial training,
property rights, or any access to healthcare, adequate nutrition,
transportation or services, to support aged, dependent spouses alone.
A project to address constraints of youth receiving adequate training
to get a job could include considerations of what jobs, projects, products, and
collaborative efforts would best benefit the communities inhabited by each
group of youths. Appropriate locally- or regionally-based projects could
include plans to create new, and provide access to existing education and jobs
in product -creation, -sales, -utilization; in service –training, -providing;
in education, heritage knowledge preservation and tech-based
communications/interconnectivity; in medical services and specialties; in
domestic and hospital/hospice-based care and sustainable interventions. Every
community eventually will have elder-citizens requiring assistance, inclusion,
active care; every community at some point has adult and youth-emergent work
forces needing employment and services themselves.
Serendipitous beneficiaries of locating training sponsorship for youth
development and skills/vocational training could include infrastructure,
energy-and-communications grids, construction, maintenance, and
transit-systems/access, water/waste management, and social-services training,
as well as specialized/medical field employment. Collaborative development and
endorsement of projects with applicable industry sponsors, for equipment and for
training, provide opportunities for “green-minded” corporations to invest at the
community level in the sustainability and serendipitous outcomes of the
populations served by their market-products/services, and build their market
share among the young populations to which they offer training and opportunity.
The elder communities served by such
inclusive projects have their own associations of serendipitous beneficiaries,
including adult offspring who are more able to contribute in their own jobs,
knowing adequate, safe care is available to/provided for the elder family
dependents. With more training, connectivity, and jobs available in outspread
communities, urban flight and other employment-seeking population shifts would
be less likely, with less detriment to the social fabric. Upgrades to “green”
and environmentally-sustainable facilities and resource/waste management
practices would benefit the ecosystems of the communities served. Infrastructure
and service administration practices could become more transparent, as
communities actively collaborate with funding sources on the projects
undertaken, and employed participants contribute to the longevity of the
program(s).
The concept of serendipitous beneficiaries as a measure and enhancement
of social responsibility and sustainability could add to the flexibility of
social infrastructures, educational programs, to the accountability and
responsibility of service, commercial and industrial providers. In an
interdependent humanity, on an interdependent planet of limited resources, a
“green” approach which includes associated industries and efforts as
serendipitous beneficiaries of planned output can result in alleviation of
“poor outcomes” for all strata of society, for our shared environment and pool
of resources, and can result in a raised quality of sustainable lifestyles for
humankind, and our millions of fellow-earth species.
