It is a great pleasure and honour to present the Simon Brand Memorial Address in 2018. Memorial lectures contribute to our profession in several ways. They keep fresh in our minds the memory of a colleague who has made exceptional contributions, such as Simon Brand. But in addition, their regularity and continuity give us an overview of issues that our profession has found topical over the years. My remarks today will focus on youth employment in Africa south of the Sahara and the relevance of climate change for strategies to address it. In preparing today’s lecture, I went back to review the first Simon Brand Memorial Address, which was delivered by Bruce Johnston in 1992. The topic was agriculture, structural change, and the lessons from the Asian experience relevant for Africa. It was a subject that Johnston chose because he knew that he and Simon Brand had shared interest in it. One of the insights from that first memorial address is highly relevant to today’s presentation; namely, that in the early period of structural transformation agriculture absorbs labour rather than shedding it.

中文翻译：

---

绝对上升，相对下降：非洲的农业、气候变化和就业创造

非常高兴和荣幸地在 2018 年发表西蒙品牌纪念演讲。纪念讲座在几个方面为我们的职业做出了贡献。他们让我们记住了一位做出杰出贡献的同事，例如西蒙·布兰德。但此外，它们的规律性和连续性让我们对多年来我们的行业发现的热门问题有了一个概览。我今天的发言将侧重于撒哈拉以南非洲的青年就业以及气候变化与应对战略的相关性。在准备今天的讲座时，我回顾了布鲁斯·约翰斯顿 (Bruce Johnston) 于 1992 年发表的第一个西蒙·布兰德纪念演讲。主题是农业、结构变化以及与非洲相关的亚洲经验教训。这是约翰斯顿选择的一个主题，因为他知道他和西蒙布兰德对它有共同的兴趣。第一个纪念演讲中的一个见解与今天的演讲高度相关；也就是说，在结构转型的初期，农业是吸收劳动力而不是流失劳动力。