AFRICAN YOUTHS AND POLITICS

It’s a common notion that youths are the leaders of Tomorrow, however from the contemporary African society, this phrase seems to be elusive. Although youths make up to 70% of the entire continental population, their participation in political processes is still minimal. This is why in many African countries one would notice a similar trend in the age of the Presidents, with more presidents being over 60 years of age. It’s not suprising that one of the greatest evil in the African society – Unemployment is felt more by the youths. Several scholars have argued that one of the major reasons why the needs of the youths in the continent are not adequately addressed is the over ageing cadre of leaders in the continent. Most African countries are grappling with a demographic ‘youth bulge' with a median age of 19 years. About  72 per cent of Africa’s youth live on less than two dollars a day.

One of the major reason why youths have boycotted the political arena in the continent, is lack of trust. It would be rare to find a youth on the continent who has witnessed good governance at least for one half of his life. A youth who has witnessed failed promises for a decade from different governments (that is if he is lucky to have witnessed democratic change of government in a decade) would eventually lose faith and hope in anything called politics. A recent research made the following observations as regards youths and political participation in Africa;

• Despite Africa’s youth bulge, the majority of the region’s presidents are over 60. Some African scholars believe this prevents the concerns of youth being brought into the political arena and advocate lowering the voting age to 16. The findings here suggest this would not necessarily result in higher youth participation in elections.
• Residency in urban areas demonstrated a similar pattern to youth effects across two of the three outcome variables. Given that Africa is urbanising rapidly and the youth bulge will remain prominent in years to come, voter abstention and low partisanship might grow.
• Given existing levels of unemployment and poverty among Africa’s youth, job creation could remain highly relevant to their political participation.

What do you think is the way forward?

Source: Resnick, D., and Casale, D., 2011, 'The Political Participation of Africa's Youth: Turnout, Partisanship and Protest', Working Paper No. 136, Afrobarometer, South Africa.  Accessed on 06-11-2013, from http://www.gsdrc.org/go/display&type=Document&id=4236&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gsdrc&utm_source=newsfeed