The
promotion of durable and sustained peace, socio-economic development
and good governance emerged as the most pressing and recalcitrant
challenges beleaguering Africa, particularly vivid in the final decade
of the last millennium. Armed conflicts littered the continent with
about 31 countries witnessing intense violence triggered by political or
socio-economic disaffections in some sections of these countries’
polities and societies. HIV/AIDS poses a pervasive and non-violent
threat to the existence of individuals, as the virus significantly
shortens life expectancy, undermines quality of life and limits
participation in income generating activities. The political, social and
economic consequences are equally detrimental to the community, in turn
undermining its security.
Changing
weather conditions are reducing the ability to produce and distribute
food. The most direct implications will be felt in agricultural losses
and rising food prices undermines access to food by everyone who depends
on markets for their consumption needs, possibly translating in to
about 200 million Africans threatened by malnutrition and abject hunger.
Even the crops manageably produced for exports, face an embargo in
harsh trade policies slapped on importation from developing countries by
the developed world, in a bid to plunge the Developing World in to more
slavery, while, the advent of democracy across the African panorama
heralds a show of ill-preparedness for the structures of democracy which
now results in complex humanitarian emergencies and crises.
The
crumble of colonialism in Africa, caused decomposed ethnic lines and
City-State allegiances to bear cracks of insecurity and ill-preparedness
to the glory and worship of urbanization, independence and
civilization. This resulted in weaknesses in the State-centric concept
of security, regarding development, human rights, peace and good
governance. Thus, whether it concerned civil wars with their dramatic
consequences, natural disasters and accidents, or yet, health crises and
major pandemics, populations face life threatening dangers.
And
even though the security of state sovereignty is very paramount in
these circumstances, the protection and later, empowerment of people at
individual and community levels – human security, has been labelled as
essential to national and international security. Inter-ethnic
conflicts, regional instability, poverty, disease, bad governance
amongst others, shape the meaning and content of security today. The
preamble of the United Nations Charter opens with the words “we the
peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations
from the scourge of war…”, to indicate that the issues of peace and
security, as well as economic and social progress and human rights, were
– and to a large extent still are – seen as matters with the purview of
individual states, their territories and their institutions, as at the
time the United Nations Charter was adopted.
Today
though, the definition of what constitutes and what influences human
security is changing. Freedom from want and freedom from fear are
increasingly recognized as not only emanating from the actions of
States, but of others. Additionally, ethnic conflicts, regional
instability and terrorist attacks, have forcefully demonstrated that the
State is not the sole actor. National borders are permeable, and
national sovereignty is no longer sufficient justification to avoid
international scrutiny and action. In essence, human security thus,
means safety for people from both violent and non-violent threats. It is
a condition of state of being characterized by freedom from pervasive
threats to people’s rights, their safety or even their lives. It is an
alternative way of seeing the world, taking people as its point of
reference, rather than focusing exclusively on the security or territory
of governments. Like other security concepts, – national security,
economic security, food security, and job security – it is about
protection. Human security entails taking preventive measures to reduce
vulnerability and minimize risk, and taking remedial action where
prevention fails.
In 2000, 189 governments reached one of the great decisions of the 20th
century, agreeing to work together to end extreme poverty, and to do it
within 15 years. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as they are
called set specific targets – on education, gender equality, child
mortality, maternal health, disease and environmental sustainability –
to protect the most vulnerable people, and empower them, thus providing
them with human security. Eight years on, these targets seem
unattainable. Every day that passes means in Africa, more mothers are
losing their children to malaria, a mosquito bite, or diarrhoea, an
upset stomach. Africa is most likely to record the least progress in the
advent of any.
While
the key triggers and causes of Africa’s woes and upheavals may differ
from country to country, what is common to all of them is the central
involvement of Africa’s youth, either as perpetrators, victims or both.
As Alex de Waal puts it, “Children and youth represent the possibility
of either an exit from Africa’s current predicament or an
intensification of that predicament”.
Youth
are an increasingly compelling subject for study in Africa, entering
into political space in highly complex ways. To pay attention to youth
is to pay close attention to the topology of the social landscape – to
power and agency; public, national and domestic spaces and identities,
and their articulation and disjunctures; memory, history, and sense of
change; globalization and governance; gender and class. Youth as a
historically constructed social category, as a relational concept, and
youth as a group of actors, form an especially sharp lens through which
social forces are focused in Africa. Through this lens, relations and
constructions of power are refracted, recombined, and reproduced, as
people make claims on each other based on age – claims that are
reciprocal but asymmetrical. Youth figure centrally in debates and
transformations in membership, belonging, and the hybridizations in
membership, belonging, and the hybridization of identities – memberships
in family and kinships, in ethnic groups, and in the state.
People
who might be considered “youth” form an increasing proportion of the
African population. By 2005, the African youth constituted 13% of the
total global youth population (18% of the world’s population). Indeed,
defined biologically as any person between the ages of 15 and 24, the
African youth is expected to constitute 15% of total global youth
population by 2015, thanks to the continent’s average annual population
growth put at 2.7% and fertility rates at 5.1% over the past 30 years.
This roughly translates that at least 62% or 654 million of the
continent’s approximately 906 million people are under the age of 24.
Furthermore, analysts deduce that only 5% of Africa’s population are
aged 60 years and above – a reverse of the ageing trend in most
developed countries. This phenomenon is exponential, but imbalanced
growth in youth population is what some have described as a “youth
bulge” – defined as a situation in which young adults aged 15-29 makeup
at least 40% of a country’s population.
Youth
today, have become the focus of rapid shifts in post colonial and
global economy and society. In the “occult economies” of Africa, the
potency of youth are extracted to sustain the power of those in
authority while young people themselves feel increasingly unable to
attain the promises of the new economy and society. In Niger in May
2000, a crisis of promise and frustration prompted secondary school
students to riot, burning tires and barricading streets, protesting a
shortened school year and the prospects of failing exams. In Sierra
Leone in June 2008, a report on the spate of violence linked to
inter-school sporting events revealed schoolchildren were smuggling
weapons like knives, razor blades and bottles into the national stadium,
where most of the competitions take place. Most of these schoolchildren
were found to be those recruited during the civil war, who were still
carried weapons. On the whole, critics continue to label Africa’s youth
bulge as a major culprit in its travails and woes.
However,
it is useful to note that it is only a tiny proportion of Africa’s
youth population that have been involved in armed conflict, the said
spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other insecurities. The majority who
rejects for example, violence, would perhaps be better appreciated if
judged against the backdrop of the frustrations caused by failed and
disrupted provision of public services, education and economic
opportunities, compounded by ‘infantalisation’ by traditional elites,
exploitation by business elites and marginalization by political elites;
or those who are infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, would perhaps be
better appreciated if public enlightenment, education and sensitization
were taken seriously, condoms are made readily available and cheap to
get, antiretroviral drugs are provided for infected people
appropriately, and stigmatization is thoroughly cut out from the
society.
These
are as compared with the compelling incentives provided by rebel
leaders to join armed groups; bribes doled out by top public office
holders in money politics to try and buy over the suffrage of youths in
order to remain in power and loot public treasury; and indeed, the force
either through trafficking; rights abuse; parental consent and/or
accord, to indulge in prostitution all as means of assuaging the natural
human need for economic survival, self-preservation and empowerment,
social relevance and belonging.
Current
trends across Africa indicate a deepening and intensification of the
cycle of poverty and economic malaise kick-started in the 1970s.
Furthermore, increasing marginalization of large sections (principally
youth) of the population from the mainstream socio-economic and
political sphere have created a sense of social dislocation, and in some
cases, strong disaffection, amongst youth. Put together, these elements
culminate in economic pressures and social tensions which often
conflagrate into full-blown conflicts. The threats of Africa’s youth
bulge on the one hand; and opportunities and potentials that this bulge
represents on the other, have left sections of the continent’s now
vulnerable societies and governments uncertain as to how to respond.
While there abound opportunities and potentials amidst this bulge, the
threats to this bulge presently pitch Africa’s youth in a precariously
vulnerable position, considering issues that concern political
marginalization, employment, urbanization and rural-urban migration,
food, HIV/AIDS and education. Over years of susceptibility, youth
perceptions of human security are bordered around these aforementioned
issues. In the advent of legislation, inadequate action beckons and
where action sets in, there is inadequate legislation. When action and
legislation lack a truce and is not in this case induced, to a large
extent by uncertainty, spawns indecision.
One
of the enduring failures of the post-independence nation building
project across Africa has been the shrinking of the public space,
limited opportunities for civic engagement and the increased
marginalization of a majority of Africa’s vulnerable populations,
particularly youth, from participating effectively in governance and
political processes. This is ironic considering the euphoria of the
collective fight against colonization and the subsequent victory of
independence, which led to the ascendance of a majority of Africa’s
post-independence ruling elites to the heights of political leadership
in their youthful years. The irony itself lies in the reality that
though it was the youth who spearheaded and fought for decolonization
and against repression in several African countries, some of these same
youth leaders – who became political leaders of their countries and
societies – were often the same ones who suppressed and excluded youth
from mainstream participation in the political arena. Clear examples are
stories of the late Dr. Hasting Kamuzu Banda, the erstwhile dictator of
Malawi; Paul Biya, ‘Life’ President of Cameroun; and Mr. Robert Mugabe,
President of Zimbabwe.
As
such, the era of post colonial governance in Africa increasingly
witnesses the systematic exclusion and marginalization of youth from
decision-making and political processes at national and local levels
across parts of Africa. A vivid example, is a study carried out by The
Conflict, Security and Development Group (CSDG) in Nigeria which
identified that, “the minimum age for becoming a lawmaker at the state
level and the Lower Chamber (House of Representatives) at the national
level has been raised from 21 and 25 in 1979 and 1989, to 30 years in
2005, while that of a Senator (Upper Chamber at National Law-making
Chamber) has been raised from 25 to 35 years. Unsurprisingly, there is
no single member of the Senate who is under 35 years of age, and the
average structure of Senators (2003-2007) shows that people aged 45-55
years form the core with 44% of the 109-member Chamber, followed by
those between 36 and 40 years (17.2)%. Similarly, in the National House
of Representatives, of the total 360 members, only five are under 35
years of age (all male), and people aged 41 to 51 years form the core
(59%), followed by those under 40 years of age – 23% (but mostly within
age 35-40 years) and those aged 52 years and above (15%). The average
age in the House of Representatives is 45 years. The current state of
affairs reflects deterioration in youth participation over time given
that in 1993, 52.4% of members were between age 30 and 40 years, and
this dropped to 46% in 1999 and 23% in 2005.”
The
implications of the continued exclusion of youth from decision-making
processes, both social and political portends ominous consequences as
has been starkly displayed in countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone,
Angola, Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, et cetera. The challenge is to
prevent fragmentation, marginalization and polarization. Individuals in
our societies are being traumatized and fragmented in different ways,
and large groups are being excluded from the benefits of production.
This situation characterizes many parts of Africa. The response to this
problem, the response to this fragmentation problem is psycho-cultural;
the response to this marginalization problem is socio-economic; and the
response to this polarization problem is socio-political. The aim is to
generate co-existence at minimum so that all of the different
communities in the societies and nations in which you are part can join
together optimally to produce higher levels of social cohesion. The
requirement of social cohesion, on which societies and human security
depend, is nonetheless being constantly undermined by the uncontrolled
and uncontrollable pursuits of States.
The
marginalization of youth however, transcends the political scene and
extends to other major facets of decision-making and participation in
mainstream society across Africa. For example, there are very few cases
in which the youth ministry and the youth budget have been administered
by youth themselves. This neglect has also been translated in to a
recurring cycle of unemployment, unemployability and underemployment.
The United Nations’ 2005 World Youth Report notes that 60.7 million and
102.1 million youth in Africa live under $1 and $2 respectively, with
over 40 million under-nourished young people aged 15 to 24 years. These
figures are further exacerbated by high-levels of youth unemployment,
with access to education still a problem for many young people. Higher
educational attainments do not guarantee a path in finding employment
and where shrinking employment is rampart; job security often overrules
job satisfaction as a motivator for young employees. This is made even
worse by the problems of urbanization and rural-urban migration.
Across
Africa, it has been observed that dysfunctional urbanization has
generated three troubling consequences: first, the intensification of
social frictions and strains among members of similar and different
ethnic groups in the competition for political influence and limited
socio-economic opportunities and resources. This often translates in to
inter-group conflict, often entered around age-old ethnic and religious
divides. Nigeria offers a good example with over 100 cases of
inter-group clashes occurring between 1999 and 2005, mostly in cities
such as Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Jos and Warri among others. The
second consequence relates to the upsurge in crime, especially juvenile
delinquency, in major cities largely due to the influx of unskilled
youth migrants from rural areas. The intense competition for limited
economic opportunities and the limited skills to gain urban employment
mean that youth migrants are more likely to engage or join underground
criminal networks that abound in urban areas for their survival. Apart
from getting involved in perennial turf wars between rival gangs, youth
migrants especially those aged 16 to 29 years are likely to take to
petty thieving, substance abuse or rape. For young girls, there is more
intensive exploitation of their labour, their sexuality and their
socio-economic vulnerability. They are often forcibly involved, or have
no option but to resort to prostitution which increases their
vulnerability to HIV/AIDS for example.
For
the young girls in conflict zones, they are often abducted, sexually
abused and forced to become ‘wives’ of rebels, often becoming
impregnated and subsequently discarded by the rebels, reducing their
opportunities for social re-integration and economic viability after the
cessation of hostilities and leaving many with both mental and physical
scars and long term health problems due to severe sexual abuse, rape
and gang rape. A third consequence is the multiplier effect of diseases
and infections arising from over-crowding and congestion, poor sanitary
conditions and limited access to health care. With an alarming share of
60% of the world’s people living with HIV/AIDS, a huge number dying of
tuberculosis and at least 200,000 children dying of malaria every 5
minutes, health remains a big issue in Africa. Infact, by 2006, a
reported 1.7 million people were dying of AIDS annually, and more than 9
million children had lost one or both parents to AIDS in Africa.
Although immense intervention have curbed and reduced prevalence in such
places as Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Uganda, Swaziland and Lesotho
still record some of the highest prevalence rates in the world while
zones like Darfur, Somalia and the Eastern region of Goma in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, remain high risk prevalence areas with
sexual abuse and rape rampantly used as weapons of war. Thus, the 4.6%
and 1.7 % infection rates of female and male youth populations
respectively could go up.
While
it must be noted that the spread of HIV/AIDS appears to be slowing down
in Africa thanks to increasing involvement of governments and civil
society groups in awareness and enlightenment campaigns, the HIV/AIDS
scourge still presents serious immediate and long-term consequences for
Africa’s youth. The first relates to the sheer loss of human capital,
especially among the youth population who have been identified as the
“most-at-risk” group, given their vulnerability as well as their
tendency to engage in risky sexual behaviour, in comparison to adults.
The impact of losing over 2 million people to HIV/AIDS scourge annually
can have long-term consequences for the supply and quality of skilled
youth in the private, public and civic sectors. The second impact is the
associated problem of over 15 million HIV/AIDS orphans scattered across
Africa. Several youth have to now take on additional burden of becoming
heads of households, catering for their siblings in an already
pressured and austere economic environment. The third relates to the
acute lack of capacity to adequately address the HIV pandemic,
highlighted by the inability to provide adequate antiretroviral drugs
for most youth in affected regions. The final aspect is that HIV/AIDS is
fast decimating Africa’s youth which make up its core labour force, its
economic engine and its future.
Fast
reactional measures become paramount to reducing the effects of
HIV/AIDS in Africa. Education has proven to be a key medium for
prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS. Its effects on maternal and child
health have been rewarding – education is correlated with improved
reproductive health, reduced infant mortality and improved child
nutrition. Education increases creativity, and makes it easier for
job-seekers to find gainful employment, and most especially, help people
living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), live ‘responsibly’ positive, and
enlighten societies on the dangers of stigmatization; warn young people
on the dangers around having unprotected sex; and discourage medical
personnel on the transfusion of unscreened blood. This is perhaps the
reason why the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number two, is to
achieve universal basic education with its third indicator as “literacy
rate of 15-24 year-olds”. Education can be useful in resolving
conflicts, and building peace. It encourages debate and dissent, and may
discourage the resort to violence or crime.
Education
is the process of enlarging people’s choices to live longer and
healthier lives, to have access to knowledge, to have access to income
and assets, and enjoy a decent standard of living. Basic literacy and
numeracy can make a significant difference, as they provide a certain
amount of independence from the readings and calculations of others.
Education enables people to make informed decisions. Education builds
and strengthens democracy – it arouses interest and increases
participation through better understanding of issues. Also, people are
better able to articulate and protect their rights when they are
educated, and knowledge builds confidence to affirm one's rights.
Education enlightens individuals and communities so they can aim to
achieve goals and seek changes when necessary.
Youth
literacy rates have generally improved in recent decades, increasing
from 66.8% in 1990 to 76.8% in 2002. But this is still not good. Several
factors account for the relatively low educational attainment in
Africa. Education and schooling is still tied to socio-economic
circumstances, and the progress in education remains affected by
poverty. Education is under-funded – educational infrastructure,
equipment and books, not to mention computers, are either limited in
supply or simply unavailable. Moreover, there are also critical
challenges associated with aligning school curricular to the peculiar
needs and future development aspirations of particular African
countries, as well as the need to match the rapid expansion in the
number of literate young people with corresponding economic growth rates
capable of absorbing the new, future outputs.
Education
can help cut the high rate of unemployment, education can solve the
problems of unemployability, and education can make underemployment a
thing of the past. If youth get adequate education and literacy rates
improve, the number of empowered minds armed with creative ideas which
can be divested in to the various peculiar needs and development
aspirations of their various countries increase, and the youth would no
longer wait for their governments to create jobs. Indeed, skilled and
competent youth will fill vacancies in the public service, but more
would be empowered like Mo Ibrahim, to become entrepreneurs, owners of
their own businesses, and employers of labour. On the long run, the
problems of marginalization, the problems of fragmentation, and the
problems of polarization will begin to die out to usher in an atmosphere
of sustained socio-economic, political and cultural development.
Advancing
human security requires a broader range of analysis than achieving the
MDGs does, but the subject of human security has not yet been as fully
articulated in terms of goals, targets and measurable indicators. The
burgeoning body of work on the MDGs can therefore be helpful to future
efforts to clarify and measure steps towards greater human security. We
may need the MDGs as a timeline to hold our governments accountable. But
we also need to ask ourselves as well, and hold ourselves accountable.
The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) initiated by the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is being freely accepted by
African governments even as it forms a key part of long-term conditions
for sustainable peace and security. By ensuring good and democratic
governance and respect for private enterprise, nations will be enabling
poor people to access up-to-the-minute information, money and business
expertise, as well as creating new commercial and employment
opportunities. By opening up Africa to big companies in a Business Call
To Action motive, initiatives from these and other companies will save
almost half a million lives, create thousands of jobs, and benefit
millions of people across Africa.
In
the race to achieve the MDGs, one of the greatest untapped resources is
the private sector. Businesses are beyond traditional business
practices to also focus on the needs of those locked out of the global
market and also show concern for the vulnerabilities of the African
Youth in the ever evolving platform of global business; it will be much
easier to make your next million dollars in Africa than in the United
States or Britain. Growth and prosperity is the objective, not aid – the
purpose of aid is to no longer require it. However, we must acknowledge
the African youth as innovative, resilient, hard working and
persevering; exhibiting high-levels of ingenuity and coping mechanisms
in very volatile and insecure environments where lack of human security
thwarts goals and aspirations.
*This essay was my entry to the 2008 Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library Essay Competiton. The references have been left out deliberately. Drop your email in a comment, and the full reference would be provided*
