Youth in African cities

By: Amin Kamete, Programme co-ordinator of the research programme ‘Gender and Age in African Cities’ at the Nordic Africa Institute.

Even in modern urban Africa, age as a biological attribute and as a social construct still matters. The truth of this statement becomes particularly significant when we remind ourselves that African cities are ‘youthful’ cities – in some cases youth make up more than half of the urbanites, making African cities some of the most youthful in the world. With no perceived let up in the rate, character and demographic nature of urbanisation, the characterisation of African cities as ‘youthful’ appears to be here to stay. Obviously, this demographic feature has implications in society, culture, the economy, politics and everyday life. It brings in a special set of problems, and makes available an interesting package of opportunities.

Beyond the stereotype
While it is acknowledged that the present and future of Africa is decided on and played out in cities, urban African youthfulness is a rarely tackled phenomenon in scholarly circles, unless of course it has something to do with gangsterism, violence, delinquency and other forms of social deviance. However, there is still a sizeable amount of interesting and mind-opening work on youths in cities and towns of Africa. This work has teased out the role of African urban youths as agents in their own right. This is a welcome departure from the normal conceptualisation of African urban youth as uncultured problem generators in need of containment, or undeveloped human beings always in need of some restraining, guiding and/or helping hand to save them from themselves and also from society, and conversely to save society from elements of these youths.

It is now an incontrovertible fact that youth are as ubiquitous as ‘adults’ in the workings of urban Africa and that in this they play – and can therefore rightfully claim – as prominent a role as the privileged social and demographic groups. It now goes without saying that in all sectors of African urban life, youth are actively engaged. Be it in the arts, politics, making a livelihood and everyday life, youth are there in the thick of things, playing a constructive or destructive role; actively participating in the production and reproduction of their respective societies; changing the terrain, and in the process being changed themselves; becoming victims and acting as villains; being included and excluded, while themselves including and excluding. In all aspects of social change and development, one finds boys and girls, young men and women making their own significant contributions, good or bad, welcome or unwelcome.

Which is not to claim that African urban youth are some kind of a homogenous entity wherever and whenever they are found. Far from it! The youth, like any other age group, make up micro-societies with their own microphysics, politics, cultures, perspectives and dynamics. There are differences in age (yes age), gender, social standing, political affiliations, cultural background and viewpoints, to mention just a few. We have seen these differences play themselves out again and again in many parts of urban Africa. Thus, be it in the militant ethnic movements in Nigeria (see the interview with Muhammad Kabir Isa), the palpably polarised political landscape in Zimbabwe, the housing scene in Blantyre, Malawi, and the making of livelihoods in Nairobi, Kenya, we repeatedly witness experiences that confirm that these ‘intra-youth’ differences matter. This is what makes the study of youth in African cities so exciting. In these experiences we see confirmed the truth that the youth ‘belong’ somewhere – that they are situated in particular positions, hold distinctive perspectives, as well as act and behave from these positions based on these perspectives.

Furthermore, whatever malady it is that afflicts the conspicuous ‘adult’ world also invariably messes up the world of the youth; be it urban poverty, unemployment, unsatisfactory services, homelessness, bad governance, corruption or HIV/AIDS. Perhaps they are hit more, seeing as they lack the wisdom, experience and resilience of ‘adults’. Maybe this helps explain the unrelenting phenomenon of street children in many large urban centres of Africa; the dominance of youth among the ranks of the hardcore criminals, drug traffickers and users, hustlers and the underclass; the existence of child-headed households; the abuse of youth as political pawns, and hired thugs; and the prominence of youth in unrest, protests, and attendant looting sprees. When hit by adversities, enticed by temptations, haunted by grievances, or taunted by confusing questions, youth do not have the vast resources and accumulated experience of their adult counterparts. To make matters worse, patronising adults acting as benefactors, seem to infuse within the youth the demeaningly patronising idea that they (the youth) have not yet attained ‘human’ status and are therefore in need of someone to think for them, act for them, do things for them, speak for them.

In addition, urban youth do not belong to a tight-knit community with clearly recognised and unified institutions, structures, norms, leadership and guidelines like their rural counterparts. This, coupled with the differences discussed above bestows upon the youth a certain degree of agency and autonomy not common in the rural sphere. More importantly it gives rise to a kind of variety that is unheard of in rural areas. The resultant temporal and spatial diversity contributes to the inexhaustibility of excitingly informative studies of African urban youth.

African urban youth in action
While it cannot be said that research into youth in African cities has reached – and should reach – a turning point, there are clear signs that agency and autonomy are increasingly coming out as fruitful insights into the lives, perspectives, activities and conditions of youth in urban Africa.

Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of this aspect comes from youth in militant ethnic movements in Nigeria. Here we observe youth as active social and political agents. The picture of docile youths is shattered by the illuminating insights coming from scholars in Nigeria, one of whom is featured in this issue of News. Here, we see vividly portrayed youth as substantive agents with grievances, ambitions, plans and strategies. This type of agency and autonomy is a far cry from the portrayal of youths as helpless pawns as in the case of the quintessential child soldier in countries such as Sierra Leone.

Similarly, in matters of creativity, youths have long proved themselves in the arts and culture. In music and theatre we have been granted insights into the creative world of youth in East Africa churning out distinctive musical flavours in the urban centres of Kenya and Tanzania. We have also heard of youth actively tackling HIV/AIDS in community theatre in Uganda. In this part of urban Africa, we witness youth taking on social issues and penning them into popular dramas and hit songs.

In matters of livelihood, many African urban youth do not wait – and in fact cannot afford – to be taken care of, to be fed when the chips are down, as they often are. The afflicted boys and girls take on the seemingly permanent challenge of making a living in a hostile environment. In the face of unfriendly planning systems, underperforming economic systems, and aggressive but spectacularly incompetent institutions, as well as confused, confusing and constantly wavering political commitments, the youth struggle to make it in the cities. This they do by navigating numerous adversities to live another day. Stories that confirm this are common in countries as diverse as Ethiopia, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.

When it comes to the political terrain, youth in Africa’s cities have proved to be as much an intractable and aggrieved part of the governed as any political constituency. Democratisation, political conflict, electoral contests and political violence are some of the ‘projects’ youth play an integral part in, a part that is not too difficult to figure out, since here the youth almost always dominate. The wave of democratisation that swept through much of Africa at the beginning of the closing decade of the last millennium bears irrefutable testimony to this assertion. The prominent role of youth, in particular among the student ranks, in political conflict in Kenya and Zimbabwe easily comes to mind in showing that oftentimes, young men and women do have a mind of their own, a voice that speaks for them, about them and through them.

Service provision is one of the areas that have haunted urban Africa from the beginning of modern urbanisation. Many a time we have been told that where there is a deficit, a vacuum, where the city authorities have failed to meet demand or to even provide the minimally required level of services, urban residents step in to provide for themselves. Of late we have heard that youth are a vital cog in the provision of such services as water, sanitation and security. They are also instrumental in providing accommodation as well as infrastructural and community facilities, however crude, however illegal.

The above snapshots serve to demonstrate that the youth are active agents in African cities. And that they deserve this tag and have earned it, for better or for worse. It is good to note that some studies from a variety of disciplines continue to bring us insights into the lives of the young members of African urban communities. This is a useful complement to the picture we get from vested interests and activists, who, by their very mandate, need to foreground the helplessness, uselessness, and cluelessness of Africa’s urban majority, thereby laying the groundwork for resource mobilisation for charitable interventions to improve the lot of the youth who would by this stage have been packaged into irresistible objects of charity.

Conclusion
That youth are rightful residents of Africa’s beleaguered and ever-expanding urban settlements should be incontestable. That they dominate the demographic landscape is a reality that has far-reaching consequences, especially given the fact that the context that they operate in, aided and abetted by other urban residents and sometimes misguided good Samaritans, is anything but conducive to their growth and development. It is in this regard that such annoyingly condescending statements that youth are the future, the leaders of tomorrow, need to be re-qualified by the realisation that having future implications is not a curse and does not confer on a demographic and social group a hibernation, some form of deferred life, an indefinite waiting stupor, where all the key decisions, resources and activities – in fact the present life – are the preserve of those who have earned their qualification into a privileged cohort, by virtue of passing some demographic barrier, a legally stipulated milestone or social criteria. Africa’s urban youth are indeed the future, but they live in the present. It is here in the present that they create the kind of future they will live and would like to live. The sooner they are taken as partners in social change and development, the better that future will be.

Selected reading
Abbink, J. and I. van Kessel (eds), Vanguard or vandals: Youth, politics, and conflict in Africa. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2005.

Chernoff, J.M., Hustling is not stealing: Stories of an African bar girl. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Dlamini, S.N., Youth and Identity Politics in South Africa, 1990–1994. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.

Environment & urbanization, vol. 14, no. 2, ‘Building better cities with children and youth’, 2002.

Maira, S. and E. Soep (eds), Youthscapes: The popular, the national, the global. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Survey on the needs, problems and aspirations of urban youth in five selected towns of Ethiopia. Addis Ababa: MOLSA, 1998.

Rwebangira, M.K. and R. Liljeström (eds), Haraka, haraka... look before you leap: Youth at the crossroad of custom and modernity. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1998.

Sesay, A., C. Ukeje, O. Aina and A. Odebiyi (eds), Ethnic Militias and the Future of Democracy in Nigeria. Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 2003.

Sheldon, K., Courtyards, Markets, City Streets: Urban Women in Africa. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.

Simone, AbdouMaliq, For the city yet to come: Changing African life in four cities. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.