Bringing together their respective expertise in international political economy and African youth cultures, Lord Mawuko-Yevugah and Paul Ugor have edited an insightful and original volume on contemporary African youth livelihoods. The book attempts to engage with two key aims: firstly, to interrogate the broader effects of neoliberalism and globalization on African youth; and secondly, to illuminate the varied social and cultural forms this group produces in response to global economic processes. With its emphasis on activism over victimization, the volume engages with recent Africanist literature on ‘waithood’ and expands our understanding of youth's actions in a time of social stagnation by considering the complex experiences of African youth as global citizens.
Introducing the volume, Ugor makes a convincing case for the need to understand African youth through their engagements with the global political economy. As neoliberalism has become a dominant international economic regime since the 1970s, African youth are not solely engaging with national policies as they once were during the continent's optimistic post-independence era. While Ugor is less clear on how neoliberalism is understood on the ground in Africa, and only hints at the ‘grim implications of neoliberalism for the so-called periphery’ (p. 9), the following twelve (empirically rich) chapters reveal youth's diverse experiences in the context of neoliberalism. Spanning the continent from Nigeria to Nairobi, from previously socialist Mozambique to the IMF success story that is Ghana, and encompassing the actions of students, militants, artists and hustlers, the chapters generate a polyphonic account of African youth.
The volume's diversity is commendable in the way in which it reminds us that the processes of globalization are not all experienced equally. Neither are they understood equally. As Wangui Kimari argues in her chapter on youth's contradictory modes of living in the Mathare district of Nairobi, neoliberalism – as with postcolonialism – is seldom known by name; rather, neoliberalism becomes known to youth through their everyday acts of existence. This is an important point that eludes critical reflection in the rest of the volume. For instance, Wale Adedeji presents a wonderfully engaging account of hip-hop as a space for political resistance in Nigeria during the shift from military to civilian rule around 1999. Although democratization came about in a context of neoliberalism at the global level, it is difficult to see how lyrics such as 2face Idibia's ‘shady politicians’ can be read as speaking back to global economies rather than to national political accountability. Similarly, Mawuko-Yevugah's chapter on student activism in the face of Ghana's neoliberal reforms to tertiary education demonstrates that some youth do recognize the import of economic policy. However, the way in which the distribution of government patronage undermined student unity, ultimately leading to the defeat of the student movement, highlights the complexities of resisting a global force at the local level. Without a concluding chapter to bring these points together, the volume leaves the forum open for others to fully interrogate the ways in which youth understand neoliberalism and other grand narratives, and how local and national platforms both allow and inhibit youth's engagements with global processes.
Despite these ambiguities of what neoliberalism is and how it operates, the chapters make us ask the question: ‘What do Africa's youth activists look like?’ Some of the book's most interesting chapters are those that unveil youth's more creative means for activism. Irikidzayi Manase's chapter on Limpopo hip-hop reiterates how popular culture can be a site of resistance for the marginalized, not only through the use of Tsonga lyrics but also by the very means of production. For instance, Tsunami, a hip-hop artist who uses his Twitter account to promote his music, demonstrates youth's ambiguous, yet far from passive, relationship with global economies. As Manase argues, exploitative international economies are ‘reinvented by excluded youth at the cultural level to gain voice and control over their own lives’ (p. 195). This process of creative transformation is reiterated in another chapter detailing art as a form of ‘resistance and re-existence’ (pp. 83–4) for Ugandan youth. As the authors, Leslie Robinson, Maria-Carolina Cambre and the Mukono-based project Artivists 4 life, argue, collaborative and educative art changes individuals, enabling a reimagination of social bodies. Examples such as Obol, who learned how to care for others through an AIDS-awareness art project, illustrate that ‘artivism’ can effect changes at the personal scale, but these examples also leave room for speculation regarding the extent to which creative cultures make a difference on a larger level.
Unfortunately, the book as a whole never engages with such an evaluation of youth cultures. We might ask, for example, whether the purpose of youth's activism is to completely overthrow or to survive within hegemonic orders. Asking this question would allow for a more nuanced analysis of what ‘agency’ and ‘resistance’ really entail, and would help complicate the current analytical focus on ‘action’ in youth's time of waiting.
Overall, the collection provides a grass-roots account of young people's livelihoods across the continent, offering new perspectives on the now well-rehearsed analyses of youth's problems of patronage, education, morality and self-reliance. The book is highly recommended for anyone interested in researching or teaching African youth studies.
