Miscalculating the Impact of Africa’s Youth

             Africa is blessed with many natural resources – from diamonds and other precious stones to petroleum and natural gas to strategic minerals on which the modern world relies.  However, Africa’s greatest natural resource is its people, especially its youth. 

            Africa has the youngest population in the world, with 70% of sub-Saharan Africa under the age of 30.  This makes Africa potentially a tremendous consumer market, provided these young people escape poverty and accumulate sufficient buying power.  It also gives Africa a tremendous pool of labor, provided young African are sufficiently trained and remain on the continent rather than become part of Africa’s brain drain.

            There continues to be a great deal of turmoil in Africa these days.  Even the number of coups and unconstitutional changes in government are again on the rise.  Unfortunately, this African youth resource is not serving as the solution to its problems, but rather became part of kindling for its social fires. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, in a report by Catherine Lena Kelly, attributes this African turmoil to several factors.

            “As violent extremist groups have gained a foothold in parts of the Sahel in recent years, one of their strategies has been to exploit communities’ grievances over access to justice. It’s a potent message,” Kelly wrote. “Human rights abuses by security sector actors and perceptions of unjust treatment by government officials are key determinants of individuals’ decisions to join violent extremist groups in the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin and the Horn of Africa.”

            Certainly, African citizens are much less likely these days to accept brutalization by security forces, and some have braved harsh responses from governments.  I went on two Congressional delegations in 2005 to meet with Ethiopians in the aftermath of violent repression by the then-government in response to what many thought was a manipulated election result.  The violent aftermath, in which many citizens, especially students, were killed and thousands more jailed had reverberations that still affect politics in that country today.

            Kelly further cites a rise in farmer-herder violence in recent years, spurred by growing population and land pressures in the context of climate change, leading to competing claims over access to land.   Communal land claims and the inability of some governments to create a system for effectively registering land and legally transferring ownership is one issue, but another is the shifting of boundaries.  For example, in Nigeria, the paths traditionally taken by cattle herders have been disturbed by government-mandated changes in local boundaries without regard to the need for animals to have grazing land on their journey through the country or for farmers to have their land protected from being overrun illegally.  In central Nigeria, I was told on one delegation visit that herder and farm youth were cooperating in cattle theft for profit.

            She further states that more than 80 percent of Africa’s population growth in the years ahead is expected to take place in cities, contributing to a rapid expansion of informal settlements in many of Africa’s urban areas. The growing share of African urban dwellers living in these informal settlements underscores the urgency of protecting the civil liberties and property rights of these citizens.  In Zimbabwe during the 2005 Murambatsvina (“Take Out the Trash”) campaign by the government at the time, informal settlements were bulldozed and families were turned out of their homes in the dead of the southern African winter.  It turned out that some of those homes had been legally registered.  Farm youth coming to cities for greater opportunities found themselves faced with no way to make a legal living nor access to secure housing.

            The positive impact of youth is being perverted by lack of opportunity and the mistreatment of African citizens – young and old – by governments desperate to hold onto power. “The increased activism by Africa’s growing youth movement is largely focused on matters of justice, such as mediating conflicts in their communities, challenging presidents who defy term limits, and promoting civic engagement,” Kelly wrote.

            In a May 2013 article in the United Nations publication Africa Renewal, the question was posed as to whether Africa’s youth comprised an opportunity for the continent or a ”ticking time bomb”.  The article by writer Kingsley Ighobor cited the example of the 2012 unrest in Senegal as an example of how youth could contribute to significant change.

“Senegalese opposition politicians denounced the country’s high unemployment rate to mobilize youth against former President Abdoulaye Wade in the country’s 2012 presidential election. Joblessness was one of the main issues that drove the country’s many young people into the streets and to the voting stations to press for a change of government. At least six people died in the protests, and President Wade was defeated by the current leader, Macky Sall,” Ighobor wrote. 

“The key lesson from Senegal’s election violence is that youth unemployment, which is 15 per cent in that country, can fuel the fire of political violence and civil unrest. A World Bank survey in 2011 showed that about 40% of those who join rebel movements say they are motivated by a lack of jobs.” 

In her 2010 book Youth and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Agents of Change, author Stephanie Schwartz wrote that in conflict and post-conflict situations, youth constituted a reservoir of energy. Some young people choose to fight or are forced into a life of violence.  Others are able to work to improve their communities, contribute to peacebuilding, reconciliation and reconstruction, and become invested in their countries’ future peace.

In fact, the so-called Arab Spring pro-democracy movement in 2010-11 started the challenge to authoritarian regimes in North Africa and the Middle East, beginning when protests in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their regimes in quick succession.  The self-immolation of a 26-year-old street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, who was protesting his unfair treatment by local officials, initiated a protest movement dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution” in the media.  It quickly spread through the country, and when the Tunisian government attempted to end the unrest by using violence against street demonstrations and by offering political and economic concessions, that strategy failed. Protests soon overwhelmed the country’s security forces, compelling President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to step down and flee the country on January 14, 2011. In October 2011, Tunisians participated in a free election to choose members of a council tasked with drafting a new constitution, and a democratically chosen president and prime minister took office in December 2011, with a new constitution promulgated in January 2014.

Inspired by Ben Ali’s ouster in Tunisia, similar protests were quickly organized among young Egyptians through social media, creating out massive crowds across Egypt on January 25, 2011. As in Tunisia, the Egyptian government also tried and failed to control protests by offering concessions while cracking down violently against protesters, but after several days of massive demonstrations and clashes between protesters and security forces in Cairo and around the country, a turning point came at the end of the month when the Egyptian army, in contrast to the police, announced that it would refuse to use force against protesters calling for the removal of President Hosni Mubarek. He left office on February 11, 2011, after nearly 30 years, ceding power to a council of senior military officers. The military enjoyed high public approval in the period before a new government was formed, but by prioritizing stability over democratic transition its popularity was diminished, and a period of instability was initiated.

In contrast to those two examples, on February 20, 2011, a movement began in Morocco that publicly demanded a constitutional monarchy in which an elected and accountable government would have control over the country’s social, economic, and security policies. Across the country, rallies began in which tens of thousands of Moroccans participated. At the heart of this movement’s demands were the role of the King, who, since independence, had been in control of all senior governmental and military appointments. Unlike its counterparts to the east, however, the February 20 movement did not openly ask for the removal of Mohamed VI from office or for the abolition of the monarchy.

 

Moreover, while Morocco’s security apparatus had been involved in violence against protesters around the country, its reputation had never been nearly as bad as that of its counterpart in Tunisia or Egypt. As a result, the movement asked for critical constitutional reforms rather than outright revolution. Even the movement’s core constitutional demands, such as the election of the prime minister by the parliament, not by the King, had already been openly addressed and debated in the press and political party offices for two decades.  Thus, change came to this liberal bastion of democracy in North Africa without the overthrow of the regime, through legally instituted reforms.

 

Young people in Africa, energized over the last decade by successes in pushing for political change and informed by access to social media, continue to either offer hope for Africa’s progress or threaten chaos if not incorporated into democracy and governance.

“It is important that youth is involved in decision making. It is important that we as young people are recognised as equal partners and as right holders – not only as victims”, said Nickson Kasolene, the youth and civil society representative of the Coordination Meeting of Youth Organisations at the Africa Regional Review – the regional preparatory meeting for LDC5 held virtually in Malawi recently.  

Indeed, it is long past time for African governments to decide whether its youth will be part of the effort to effectively address its challenges or continue to be contributors to its problems.