African youth
African youth are trailing behind their elders in political and civic participation, a new Afrobarometer flagship report has revealed.
The largest generational disparity is in voting, where the youth trail their elders by a striking 18 percentage points.
The report noted that African youth (aged 18-35) are less likely than older generations to attend a community meeting (-12 percentage points), contact traditional leaders (-10 points), contact local government councillors (-10 points), feel close to a political party (-8 points), and join with others to raise an issue (-8 points) .
“The most striking deficit is in voter turnout (-18 percentage points). Senegal (-29 percentage points), Cameroon (-28 points), and Zimbabwe (-28 points) exhibit the largest disparities in voting rates by age,” it said.
It further noted that attendance at community meetings saw the widest gaps in Côte d’Ivoire (-28 points), Zambia (-26 points), and Botswana (-24 points).
“When it comes to direct engagement with local government officials, the largest disparities are in Lesotho (-24 points), Zambia (-20 points), Guinea (-16 points), and Kenya (-16 points),” it added.
According to the report, the youth are more likely than their elders to participate in protests in many African countries, although rates in 16 countries differ by no more than 1 percentage point.
Tunisia stands out with the largest gap in protest rates (+17 points), followed by Sudan (+9 points) and São Tomé and Príncipe (+7 points).
The report, the second in an annual series on high-priority topics, draws on data spanning the past decade, including the latest round of nationally representative surveys in 39 countries, representing the views of more than three-fourths of the continent’s population. The analysis focuses on 10 key indicators of citizen engagement.
These generational gaps underscore the challenges of political participation on the world’s most youthful continent if governments fail to create channels for meaningful engagement.
The new flagship report, based on 53,444 face-to-face interviews, is accompanied by country scorecards on citizen engagement that provide an at-a-glance snapshot of key indicators of citizen participation for each of the surveyed countries.
A Daily Guide Report