1In 2015 Africa had almost 1.2 billion inhabitants, [1] with 700 million of those living in rural areas (United Nations 2014b, 2015). The rural proportion of Africa’s population has been decreasing steadily for sixty years: in 1950, 85% of Africans lived in rural areas, but by 2015 that figure had dropped to 60% (United Nations 2014b). Nevertheless, the actual number of rural dwellers is still increasing: across the entire continent, the rural population has doubled since 1980 (United Nations 2014b, 2015). The situation varies greatly from country to country: 88% of Burundi’s population is rural compared to only 15% in Gabon.

2There is no recent analysis of how the age structure of Africa’s population varies by place of residence. However, United Nations projections for the period 1980-2015 are available online (United Nations 2014c). [2] In 2015 there were about 130 million rural dwellers aged between 15 and 24. These young rural Africans have been the focus of recent interest from international organizations, NGOs, and cooperation agencies (Stührenberg 2015; African Union 2013), but their lives are still quite poorly understood. Their living conditions are often assumed to be similar to those of previous generations, and they tend to be viewed through the lens of extreme situations (conflict, violence, mass rural exodus).

3In 2005, Afrique Contemporaine published a special report focusing on young rural Africans, coordinated by Jean-Pierre Chauveau. Contributions looked at the political and economic engagement of young people in agrarian West African societies. At the time, Chauveau lamented the fact that the scientific literature was dominated by studies of urban zones. Twelve years later, that situation has not changed. There are still fewer studies of rural than urban youth. [3]

4Capital cities and other large urban areas are seen as sites of change and modernity (Dubresson & Jaglin 2010) and as such as the natural environment for youth empowerment. Rural areas are often studied in the context of migration, particularly migration toward cities (Antoine et al. 2001). The International Year of Family Farming (2014) could have provided an opportunity for publications on the role of young people in agriculture and in the countryside more generally. However, young people received scant attention in the numerous French-language magazine articles about agriculture in Africa that appeared between 2010 and 2014. [4]

5This issue of Afrique Contemporaine is dedicated to those young people. We are interested in their living conditions, their paths to independence, and their family and economic trajectories. This collection aims to show that, despite extreme diversity, young people often face similar challenges and opportunities. The difficulty of achieving economic, residential, and marital independence is a problem shared by numerous young people throughout rural Africa (Golaz 2014; Randall & Mondain 2015; Hertrich & Lesclingand 2015). Despite the attractions of an urban lifestyle that seems easier and more modern, not all young people are losing interest in traditional rural economic sectors. Nor do they all want to become independent of their families. This issue of Afrique Contemporaine focuses on what keeps young people in rural areas, in terms of constraints but also opportunities.

Who Are Africa’s Rural Young People?

6Quantifiable data about rural young people in Africa are rare, and for good reason: there is no universally accepted definition of youth or of what counts as rural. For the purposes of this project, there is no need to define the categories of “young” or “rural” a priori, for example as a specific age range or type of activity. The terms merit a more nuanced definition that changes depending on the context.

7Studying youth often amounts to studying the social conditions surrounding the passage from one age status, adolescence, to another, adulthood (Galland 2009). Therefore, what youth looks like varies depending on the social context and the historical circumstances. “‘Youth’ is just a word,” wrote Pierre Bourdieu (1993, 94). It encompasses a diverse and sometimes contradictory range of situations that are difficult to analyze as a whole: “it’s an enormous abuse of language to use the same concept to subsume under the same term social universes that have practically nothing in common” (Bourdieu 1993, 95).

8In certain societies, youth does not exist: individuals pass directly from the status of a child to that of an adult. For some young girls in rural Africa, entrance to adulthood is hastened by marriage and the birth of their first child, often to the detriment of their education (Binet & Gastineau 2014). The social, economic, and cultural changes that all African countries have undergone in recent decades have blurred the contours of the transitory phase of youth, which encompasses ever more complex and varied trajectories (Antoine et al. 2001; Hertrich 2007; Calvès et al. 2009).

9The only thing researchers, international organizations, and politicians are able to agree on when it comes to the definition of youth is that it cannot be reduced to a simple age range. Nevertheless, for practical questions of international comparison, most studies use statistics based on standardized age groups. The boundaries of the “youth” category fluctuate depending on the field (education, employment) each institution is active within (Table 1).

10Similarly, there is no single definition of “rural” that can be applied throughout Africa. The criteria used to define rurality differ from one country to the next. The distinction between urban and rural may be related to population or development density, the availability of public services, or specific economic activities. There are multiple criteria. In some countries, a political or administrative decision alone is enough to define the status of an area. In Tunisia, for example, municipalities are created and demarcated by decree, and correspond to an extremely wide variety of settlements (Belhedi 2004): in the 2004 census, municipality populations ranged from 638,841 (Tunis) to 784 (Beni M’tir). Some authors are ambivalent about the very notion of distinct urban and rural dwellers, emphasizing the long-standing tradition of back-and-forth movement between city and countryside (Dubresson & Jaglin 2010). Nevertheless, countries do compile statistics that make it possible to distinguish between rural and urban areas in the same way as they enable us to identify young people. When interpreting the data, it is important to remember that the definitions of rural and urban vary depending on the country and the permeability of borders between the two zones.

Youth Activities in Rural Areas

11The role of young people in family agriculture in Africa is of interest to public authorities, international organizations, associations, and cooperation agencies (Wampfler & Bergès 2017; African Union 2013). Such institutions issue warnings about young peoples’ disenchantment with the farming profession, which is seen as difficult and badly paid. Living conditions in rural areas seem poor (limited access to basic services, inadequate communication networks), especially for those who have received an education or spent any time in cities and for those struggling to carve out their own place on their family’s farm. Rural young people who want to establish their own farm must overcome numerous obstacles: the difficulty of acquiring land, credit, relevant training, and so on. Underemployed, restricted to the status of family helpers, they aspire to independence and a personal income. Young men in Djougou, Benin, are willing to travel to Nigeria to work as farm laborers, in conditions that are significantly worse than on their family farms, just for the chance to earn a meager salary (Gastineau et al. 2015). In regions like Ziro, Burkina Faso, the development of large-scale farms provides young people with an opportunity to earn an income. Even though not all will succeed, the fact that there are at least some local employment opportunities means the young people of Ziro are less inclined to leave rural life and agriculture behind (Ouedraogo & Tallet 2014).

12Rural economic activity, however, is not limited to agriculture: young people are active in every sector of the contemporary rural economy. Higher population density brings with it an increased openness and outward-looking attitude as well as greater diversification (Golaz 2009; Losch et al. 2013), especially as a result of increasing demand (for services and processed products) in rural areas themselves. The development of transport links is opening up an ever greater proportion of rural Africa and encouraging the emergence of non-agricultural activities that depend on the dynamism of young people (Porter 2014), who thus contribute toward job creation and revenue generation.

13Decentralization policies and the development of health and education services are creating skilled jobs in small towns and stimulating new forms of movement and exchange between rural and urban areas. Market integration is also helping to strengthen the links between town and countryside. The development of secondary cities means young people can live with one foot in the city and one in their village (Chaléard & Dubresson 1989, Rakotonarivo et al. 2010), benefiting from services that are not available in rural areas while continuing to live off the land. For rural young people, journeys to and from the city are a deliberate strategy for becoming independent of their elders. Intergenerational relationships everywhere are changing (Bryceson 2002; Golaz 2007). Far from being passive participants in the construction of their future, young people are seizing all available opportunities, getting mobilized, forming connections, and in some cases even managing to invest and settle down in rural areas. Young farmers, artisans, teachers, motorcycle taxi drivers, etc., are the primary drivers of the profound transformations currently underway throughout rural Africa (Losch et al. 2013). They may combine forces in professional organizations, associations of young agricultural producers or cultural or political associations. Young people are asserting their independence and developing networks of solidarity and socialization that go beyond family connections.

Rural Young People Are More and More Educated

14Even an imperfect quantitative framework is useful for understanding the diversity of young rural lifestyles on the continent. Ours is based on the definition of youth that is most widely used in international statistics: people between 15 and 24 years old.

Age Pyramid for Africa

Age Pyramid for Africa

Population distribution by place of residence, age group, and sex, in % of total population
This age pyramid for Africa shows that rural young people make up 12% of the total population of the continent. They are more numerous than urban young people, who make up 8% of the total African population. Rural men between 20 and 24 make up 2.7% of Africa’s total population.

15The only available Africa-wide data are published by the United Nations (2014c). [5] Rural young people represent 11% of the total population. They are more numerous than urban young people (8% of the African population). The sex ratio among young people is similar everywhere: 103 men to 100 women in urban areas, and 101 men to 100 women in rural areas.

16National censuses enable more reliable estimations of age and sex distribution by place of residence at the national level. [6] The most recent age pyramids for Burkina Faso (2006), Senegal (2002), Uganda (2002), and Kenya (2009) reveal the diversity of different situations. [7] The populations of Burkina Faso and Uganda are the youngest and most rural overall. Rural young people make up between 8% (Burkina Faso) and 10% (Kenya) of the total population. The sex ratio among rural 15-24 year-olds varies from 85 men to 100 women in Burkina Faso, to 101 men to 100 women in Kenya (92 in Uganda, 94 in Senegal).

17Regardless of the national level of urbanization, every country’s demographic pyramid shows signs that rural young people are migrating to cities. Young women and men are both migrating to urban areas, but to different extents. Rural to urban migration is most prevalent in Kenya, especially around age 20. In Burkina Faso, it is primarily men who leave rural areas (shown by the unequal sex ratio in rural areas)—but not to head for Burkinabe cities, where the sex ratio is 92 men to 100 women: some of them migrate to other countries, particularly Ivory Coast. [8]

18The education level of rural young people varies greatly between countries: in Anglophone Africa, more than 50% of rural young people have completed primary education, while in Francophone nations less than 30% have done so. In Kenya, 52% of men between 15 and 24 are still in education, which is true of only 9-15% in Burkina Faso or Senegal (Table 2). These contrasts are also evident among women. Some countries lack sufficient educational services in rural areas, especially for secondary and tertiary education and vocational training. It is girls who are most often affected by inadequate school capacities or the distance to local schools. Alongside gender norms, economic and cultural contexts are important for understanding education differences between the sexes (Lange & Pilon 2000).

Age Pyramid for Four Countries

Age Pyramid for Four Countries

Population distribution by place of residence, age group, and sex, in % of the total population

Table 2

Education Level and Employment among Young People in Several African Countries

Proportion of rural young people still in education Proportion who have completed at least primary education Proportion of rural young people in active employment Proportion of rural young people who are unmarried Men Women Men Women Men Women Men Women 2006 Burkina Faso 9.6 4.3 14.2 6.5 83.5 66.2 80.3 33 2005 Cameroon 28.5 17.5 59 45.6 33.2 34.6 80.3 47.8 2006 Egypt 33.2 30.7 80.1 69.9 41 7.1 93.9 65.3 2007 Ethiopia 30.9 19.7 20.2 11.7 69.3 66 79.5 46.3 2010 Ghana 48.6 36.2 64.6 57.5 48.7 48.3 87.2 63.2 2009 Kenya 52.5 41.2 65.4 68.9 51.6 51.8 89.5 62.4 2008 Liberia 53.6 36.9 33.7 21.8 34.2 40 79.3 55.2 2009 Mali 22.1 12 23.2 13.2 67.8 38.8 79.8 38.4 2007 Mozambique 37.0 18.2 15.6 7.6 57.3 63.8 62.9 28.2 2010 Nigeria 53.6 40.4 74.5 62.2 37.9 33.3 96.1 62.6 2002 Rwanda 22.2 16.6 26.3 24.6 54.1 59.3 75.6 64.7 2002 Senegal 14.5 7.4 18.8 11.3 69 25.3 82.9 42.2 2004 Sierra Leone 40.1 16.2 24 10.2 50.9 60.5 84.7 39.4 2008 South Sudan 28.9 16.6 10.5 6.3 52.3 55.9 84.4 52.6 2008 Sudan 35.6 24.5 22.3 20.8 42.7 17.3 84.4 51 2012 Tanzania 33.5 24.4 74.5 72.5 60.1 60.6 80.7 61.4 2002 Uganda 45.6 29.9 55.1 46.6 43 40.1 78.9 47.2

Education Level and Employment among Young People in Several African Countries

19These educational variations are reflected in data about economic participation: some of the young people in education are adults of working age, but they are less represented than others in the labor market, whether formal or informal. It should be emphasized that large national surveys do not always report family economic activities correctly. They often relegate the women and young people of a family to the status of domestic helpers, minimizing their role in agricultural work.

20More than 80% of rural young men in Burkina Faso are already in active employment (only 9% are still in education). In Kenya, 52% of rural young men are in employment (52% are in education). The employment rate of rural young women varies from 7% in Egypt to 66% in Ethiopia. These differences cannot be explained solely as a result of education: in contrast to the men, a significant proportion of young women have left the education system but do not claim to be in active employment. In Senegal, for example, 25% are in active employment and 7% are in education. More than two thirds of women are, therefore, neither employed nor in education. These figures reflect gender systems that, in some countries, exclude married women from economic activities and/or the public sphere and impose a gendered distribution of labor (domestic versus economic), but they are also partly a product of the inability of statistical systems to correctly represent the variety of women’s activities (processing agricultural produce, artisanal work) (Charmes 2005). The ways in which productive and reproductive labor are interlinked are rarely taken into account, but they are a heavy burden on women, and particularly young women who are starting married life. In every country, women get married younger than men (Table 2). Here, too, there are significant differences between countries: almost 70% of young rural women in Burkina Faso are married, compared to about 40% in Kenya or Rwanda.

21These statistics reveal the diversity of the life circumstances of 15-24 year-olds in rural Africa, whether in education, employment or marriage, but they tell us nothing about the complexity of processes of youth empowerment. The five articles in this issue of Afrique Contemporaine explore these processes in a range of contexts: from West Africa (Senegal, Ivory Coast) to Madagascar via East Africa (Tanzania, Uganda). The articles are supplemented by six “Signposts.”

22In Madagascar, access to the property sector is crucial for rural young people. In the area studied by Perrine Burnod, Heriniaina Rakotomalala, Beby Seheno Andriamanalina and Hadrien Di Roberto, it is now almost impossible to open up new land by clearing the forest, and the parcels of land passed down through inheritance are ever smaller. Acquiring land through purchase is thus essential for young people, who nevertheless still own less land than their elders. Burnod and her colleagues show that young people’s interactions with the market are still strictly structured and regulated by family relationships, and explain how the state, especially in its decentralized form, could facilitate access to production resources.

23Moving away from subsistence agriculture, the next article looks at youth in western Ivory Coast in the context of the life trajectories of young coffee and cacao planters. Within a system of agricultural exportation that proved highly profitable for previous generations but that no longer provides favorable conditions for young people to become independent and self-sufficient, youth is simultaneously a weakness and a source of innovation. Ronan Balac shows how these young people—educated, open to the world—are using their agricultural savings to start businesses outside their villages, aided by new forms of solidarity that transcend old oppositions between locals and outsiders or elders and youths.

24By focusing on two types of activity, itinerant selling in southwestern Tanzania and tourism work in the north of the country, Sylvain Racaud, Rémi Bénos, Bénédicte Thibaud and Bernard Charlery de la Masselière show how rural young people are exploiting local resources by moving between towns and rural areas. Mobility creates a zone of opportunities and complementarities between rural and urban or local and national resources. Itinerant selling and tourism are stages in the professional trajectories of young people who are not systematically turning their backs on agriculture. At different points in their careers, young people integrate the complementary resources of city and countryside in a wide variety of ways.

25In the Niakhar region in Senegal, rural young people whose families cannot afford to meet their needs (telephones, clothes, leisure) must migrate to find temporary work. This migration starts while young people are still at school, and is a phase of temporality of varied length. For the young women and men who participate in temporary migration, the main sectors of employment are domestic work in the city and seasonal agricultural labor, respectively. Although such migratory episodes stem from a desire for emancipation from family, they are still structured by strong family networks, especially for young women. The movement of people to new areas is a driver of social change, but migration also creates inequality as a result of variation in resources acquired and opportunities found. As Valérie Delaunay, Claudine Sauvain-Dugerdil, Régine Franzetti, Guillaume Golay, Aurore Moullet and Emmanuelle Engeli show, while temporary migration provides a chance for young people to gain independence by looking beyond the limited opportunities available in their native area, family nevertheless retains a strong hold on young people throughout the period of temporary migration.

26Valérie Golaz, Claire Médard, Susan Mwangi and the MPRAM team [9] show how, for young Ugandans, empowerment processes are being transformed by opportunities in the oil production sector in the area around Lake Albert. Certain actors exploit the category of “youth” for their own political ends. The national media echo the discontent of young people who complain of being marginalized because they have not received the compensation they expected for their land, or the education or jobs they had hoped for. Despite this alarmist discourse, opportunities do exist, although they are more the result of overall growth in the region than of the oil sector specifically. Some rural young people know how to seize such opportunities.

27The “Signposts” section offers insights based on a complementary, interdisciplinary approach. Muriel Champy and Anne-Marie Peatrik present a critical approach to the anthropology of youth in Africa. Jean-Pierre Rolland and Bruno Losch synthesize current knowledge about specific aspects of the young rural African experience: vocational training and employment, respectively. Agnès Adjamagbo explores the trajectories of women in Ivory Coast to show how young women’s social status and economic circumstances are tied to the success of their marriage plans. Pierre Blaise Ango discusses the initiatives in place in Cameroon to encourage young people to become farmers. Finally, Clara Arnaud presents the results of a study by the French Development Agency on the exclusion of rural young people in the Sahel.

What Can We Learn?

28The articles and “Signposts” in this issue reveal the pervasive role of family—parents, relatives, and siblings—in young people’s paths to autonomy, regardless of the cultural, geographic, social, or economic context. They describe young men and women with active plans to become self-sufficient, seeking family support for their projects so they can acquire the economic capital (Balac; Golaz et al.), land (Burnod et al.; Balac) and/or social capital (Delaunay et al.) they need. Faced with stagnant real-estate and job markets, these young people depend to a large extent on relatives and family networks to provide access to land or employment, whether locally or through migration.

29There are clear differences between rural young people and the older generations: young people are more educated, more mobile, more open to the world (thanks to the spread of mobile telephones and even the internet). They aspire to a different sort of life than their parents. They want personal income, new consumer goods, and a more equitable distribution of resources between the generations. For the women, who have similar ambitions to the men, the obstacles are even more numerous. To overcome them, they invest differently in their marital and family relations (Adjamagbo).

30Agriculture and animal husbandry seem to be the least attractive and least profitable professions in the context of young people’s steadily increasing social or educational capital. Some young people want to move into other types of employment, but struggle do so in both rural and urban areas (Losch; Golaz et al.). Many others remain committed to agriculture, whether crop or livestock farming, but take on several other jobs as well, travelling to and from the city to ensure a better income, sometimes with the help of their parents (Racaud et al.; Delaunay et al.).

31Agriculture is still the principal employment sector for rural young people (Losch), but their style of farming differs from that of their parents. They utilize new networks and new forms of capital, and seize every opportunity: networks of friends or churchgoers in Ivory Coast (Balac), the arrival of trinkets from China on the Tanzanian market (Racaud et al.), regional development associated with the oil industry in Uganda (Golaz et al.), or a mobile approach to work that enables them to establish themselves in rural areas in Senegal (Delaunay et al.) or in Tanzania (Racaud et al.).

32These developments deserve better state support (Arnaud). Even where specific public policies exist, they barely affect young people and are not designed for the long term (Golaz et al.). Vocational training is rare and often inadequate for artisanal work, services and agriculture (Rolland, Ango). Young people need fair regulation, facilitation, and safeguarding of access to land, to means of production, and more generally to capital. States largely leave these sorts of initiatives in the hands of the private sector or of young people themselves.

33There is, therefore, neither a full break nor full continuity between the generations. Young people are constantly inventing new ways to balance networks of family and friends, agricultural and other labor, city and countryside, monetization and mutual aid. Rural young Africans are transforming social norms, driving economic change in rural areas, and strengthening exchange and connections between villages and cities. If a few decades ago the city seemed to be the driver of modernity and social change, today that is no longer true. For many of these young people, the future is being built in rural areas.