By 2050, one in three of the world’s children will live in Africa. Yet this demographic shift coincides with a profound learning crisis: over 70 percent of children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10—and in Sub-Saharan Africa, the figure reached 86 percent before the pandemic. Without rapid acceleration in foundational learning outcomes, this demographic advantage risks becoming a source of deeper inequality and lost opportunity, talent, and productivity in the labor market.