Young Future Africa - Images, Imagination and its Making: An Introduction

Abstract

Introduction 2 to reproduce notions of hopelessness, decline and a bleak future (Cruise O'Brien 1996; Honwana 2014). On the other hand, today's children and youth are perceived as the hope for Africa's future, a generation which is seen as having the potential to overcome social, political and moral decline and break new ground in order to find a place in (a better) society (Diouf 2003; Masquelier 2005). Emerging middle classes in African cities, increasing political engagement in totalitarian states, and spaces of economic and cultural creativity in urban spheres serve as examples of this (Spronk 2012; Kirschner 2010; Perullo 2005). While analyses of African children and youth as a generation of either hope or decline have added important insights, such studies often speak of, and for, young people without taking their explicit engagement with the future into account. We believe that in order to paint a more differentiated picture of childhood, youth and future in Africa, we need to study the young generation from its own perspective; the ideas, expectations and concrete practices of young people with regard to their future. Children and young people not only have a role to play in the near and distant future, they also formulate their expectations in the present, and thus contribute to shaping the future (see e.g. Prince 2005 for young Hip Hop activists in Kenya and Shahine 2011 for the rising political engagement of youth during the so-called Arab Spring). In stressing in particular how the future is shaped and fought for by young Africans in contemporary contexts, we take up Jennifer Cole's and Deborah Durham's remark that the future is always projected-in the sense of "throwing forward", as well as in the sense of having a life "project" (2008: 21). With our particular view of children and young people as designers and negotiators of the future, we further follow Michaela Pelican's and Jan Patrick Heiss's interest in "making a future" and how it is "confronted and constructed through action" (2014: 7). This perspective does justice to a point which is essential in the context of future: change. Individual and collective images and ideas of how the future will be are not static, but are always embedded in political and economic conditions and social relations that are dynamic and can also be influenced by the actors themselves. This does not mean that the future has to be different from the present or the past per se; and negotiating the future does not necessarily mean breaking with existing orders or relations, for example between the generations. Rather, continuity is important on many levels. We understand continuity and change as an expression of dynamic negotiation processes, and it is these processes which seem to us to be central to an understanding of childhood, youth and future. All contributions to this volume engage with such dynamics. Senni Jyrkiäinen and Victoria Bisset discuss the significance of modern ideas of love in times of internet use among educated young people in urban Egypt; Sabrina M...

Contested futures: The ‘humanitarian value’ of childhood in rural Sierra Leone

“…In Gbantrani, however, the children’s rights programmes offered by international aid agencies did not quite match aid recipients’ expectations of direct financial help, generating significant tensions. Further, such aid programmes could inappropriately boost children’s ‘neoliberal aspirations’ (Martin et al, 2016) within an economic context disintegrated by foreign capital. Children’s idealisation of ‘white people’s education’ and concomitant devaluation of the local communities’ only available source of living – agricultural labour – was one of the most visible side effects of this, despite the fact that even the most educated youths in rural Sierra Leone need to return to farming after graduation.…”

“…You'll not become a civilised person, and your skin will not be as soft and white as yours. (Youths, group interview) Children's 'neoliberal aspirations' (Martin et al, 2016;Shaw, 2014) of individual success, wealth and self-affirmation were utopian dreams in a context of widespread poverty and scarce job opportunities. They stood in contrast with traditional values of intergenerational care, social relatedness and young people's moral debts to the community's elders.…”

“…families, policy-makers, international organisations) in different societies (e.g. Bolotta and Vignato, 2017; Bühler-Niederberger, 2010; Cheney and Sinervo, 2019; Martin et al, 2016). In her seminal work on children’s value in early 20th-century America, sociologist Viviana Zelizer (1994) described the conceptual shift from an economic-utilitarian interpretation of children’s societal role to the public emotionalisation of their non-monetisable value.…”

Challenging popular representations of child trafficking in football

“…The belief that migration will lead to improved life chances is not unique to aspirant footballers. It is a facet of broader cultural meanings of mobility circulating within the Ghanaian societysomething which has also been highlighted in non-football-related research with young people in other West African contexts (Martin et al, 2016). Therefore, while players are keen to migrate in order to play at a higher level (Darby, 2013), it is important not to attribute this desire to migrate solely to a "culture of mediocrity" within the local football industry.…”

Preliminary Material

“…A strong reference to local (emic) categories certainly represents those visions that simply distinguish non-married people from those who are married with children. Other, more sociologically minded perspectives focus on people's social positioning in society with regard, principally, to the factors of their ( limited) economic status, experience and political influence, yet endowed with creativity and capacity to change (see Amit-Talai and Wulff 1995;Martin, Ungruhe and Häberlein 2016). This automatically enlarges the category of 'youth' to include large cohorts of people who might even be married and starting a professional career.…”