She is training to be a seamstress four days a week and works as a cook on two other days. In between, Grace Garus Dalop finds time to peddle wigs. Along with tips and financial help from neighbours and acquaintances, that is just enough for the 26-year-old to rent a room in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria. “Everybody wants to leave Nigeria,” says Ms Dalop, “because you work every day of your life and you don’t see the money you’re working for!” She blames her plight on the president, for whom she prays, though she did not vote for him. Deep down, she thinks it may be time for the army to intervene.
Some of Ms Dalop’s frustration is particular to Nigeria, where inflation has been above 30% on average for more than a year, with food inflation running even higher. Yet much of it is common among young people across Africa. Better educated than their parents and full of entrepreneurial zeal, they find that their societies are not letting them fulfil their potential. Forced to juggle multiple side-hustles to stay afloat, many try their luck abroad, seek solace in God or find themselves tempted by authoritarian politics.
That matters not only for the individuals but because young Africans are the future. As countries in the rich world age and shrink, Africa’s population will continue to grow (see chart). It is projected to double by 2050, with the median age below 25. As Africans make up a greater share of the world’s young, it is essential to understand the forces that shape them.
One is burning economic frustration. Unlike everywhere else in the world, young people across the continent are no more likely to be in salaried jobs than their parents, even though they are better educated. Three-quarters of young Africans say they are struggling to find adequate work, blighting their ambitions. “When my dad was 39 he had two houses and a piece of land,” says a Ugandan civil-society worker in her 30s. “I’m still renting.” The frustration is compounded by social media, where glitzy posts from around the globe suggest just how far they lag behind their peers in Europe, America or Asia.
Young Africans have made a virtue of necessity. Startup entrepreneurs in Lagos and Nairobi are disrupting their countries’ moribund banking systems with new fintech, or finding creative solutions to improve food supply chains and make agriculture more efficient. Others combine several small-scale enterprises to make ends meet in the informal economy. Yet the secure jobs many want elude them. Since 2000, economies across sub-Saharan Africa have added some 9m jobs a year, writes Edward Paice, the head of the Africa Research Institute in London, in his book “Youthquake”. Less than a third have been in waged employment—not enough to support the roughly 12m young Africans joining the job market each year.
Many young people feel that their economic malaise is due to failing political systems in their countries, and that they have little agency to improve things. Cultural norms stressing respect for elders have helped entrench a gerontocracy. Protests are suppressed, co-opted by elites or simply ignored. “I might as well accept that I can never get access to the corridors of power…so let this shit burn down,” says Christian Adika, a PhD student and regular protester from Ghana. The Ugandan civil-society worker has come to accept elections as a rubber-stamping exercise for the ruling party. “People are saying, ‘Yes we are angry, but if we go out there, we will either die or end up going to prison’,” she says.
Such frustrations have eroded faith in democracy. An Afrobarometer survey published in 2023 found that 60% of young Africans are not happy with how democracy works. Only 37% identify with a political party, a smaller share than their parents’ generation. In 2024 the Africa Youth Survey, funded by a South African charity, found that 60% of young Africans think “Western-style democracy” is not a good fit for their countries. “I shocked myself by having the thought that maybe we just need a [Paul] Kagame,” says the Ugandan civil-society worker, talking of Rwanda’s autocratic president. Youngsters fed up with collapsing infrastructure are impressed by Mr Kagame’s apparent effectiveness in improving things like access to household electricity. With no memory of the region’s most brutal military regimes, some have even cheered military coups.
Many youngsters are flocking to the pews in search of an escape. In contrast to much of Europe, young Africans are just as devout as their parents. By 2050 more Christians will live in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else. “We don’t have systems that work, we need to believe in a higher power,” says David Oladapo, a 30-year-old devotee and tech worker in Nigeria. This piety is fuelling conservative values. Only 37% of young Africans think gay and trans people should have more protection. Some 60% of Africa’s Christians want the Bible to govern national law.
Most of the growth in Christianity is driven by Pentecostalism, the dominant Protestant denomination in at least eight African countries, including Nigeria and Zambia. Even in Ethiopia, where Orthodox Christianity has had a presence since the fourth century, a fifth of the population now identify as Pentecostals, says Jon Abbink of Leiden University in the Netherlands. Part of the appeal is that Pentecostalism encourages hustling. It espouses a “prosperity gospel” that says that, in effect, you can pray your way to success (hard work doesn’t hurt). Pentecostal churches offer access to patronage networks and political power from which most young Africans are excluded in the rest of their lives.
Yet for all their piety, few are relying on the power of prayer alone to improve their lot. Those who can, look abroad for the opportunities that elude them at home. Half of those polled for the Africa Youth Survey plan to move away in the next five years. Fewer than half of school leavers want to stay on the continent, according to a survey by the African Leadership University in Rwanda. Some 37% want to move to America. A quarter hope to reach Europe. For Ms Dalop, the seamstress in Lagos, “anywhere asides Nigeria” will do.
With little to lose at home and all to play for abroad, some take desperate risks to leave and end up falling victim to traffickers or smugglers. Between 2020 and mid-2024 some 8,300 people died trying to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean, according to the UN (the real number is probably higher). Yet many who make it out find success. West African restaurateurs are earning Michelin stars in London. Streams of Afrobeats on Spotify increased more than sixfold between 2017 and 2022.
What does all this mean for the future? One danger is to democracy on the continent. “The gap between the promise of democracy and its realised dividends over the last 30 years is arguably the biggest threat to democratic consolidation in African states,” says Ken Opalo of Georgetown University in Washington, DC. If the frustrations of youngsters remain unaddressed, three decades of democratic progress could crumble.
Yet there is also a more hopeful possibility. Youth protests in recent years have forced legislative changes in Kenya and prevented the dubious postponement of elections in Senegal, among other achievements. Well-targeted political mobilisation by the young may yet force their governments into becoming more responsible. Almost 40% of young Africans say that, despite everything, they are optimistic about the future. Imagine what they could do if they were innovating because of better politics rather than in spite of them. ■
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