Mikko Takkunen, Photo Editor, International, The New York Times
The New York Times’s International desk is doing an ambitious project about Africa’s youth boom, which is based on the statistic that Africa has the fastest-growing, youngest population of any continent. By 2050, one in four people on the planet will be African, causing this seismic change, which is already starting to register. The opening piece was written by the chief Africa correspondent for the Times, Declan Walsh, and we assigned Paris-based Filipina photographer Hannah Reyes Morales to take the photographs. She made four trips to five countries in different parts of the continent. This photograph, showing university students playing on the Yoff Beach in Dakar, Senegal, in March of 2023, ran at the top of the story online and on…