Young Africans need to resist the way they are being spoken about, argues Wangui Kimari.
Africa is obsessed with talking about the ‘youth bulge’. Pundits and politicians are engaged in an endless conversation about the vast and growing population of young people on their continent, where there are set to be almost a billion under-18s by 2050.
But the ‘youth bulge’ is not a neutral demographic discourse. It has become a highly suspect way of thinking about young people, inflected by long-standing preoccupations with African birth-rates and a dystopic image of ‘coming anarchy’.
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