Why do youth participate in violence in Africa? A review of evidence

ABSTRACT

This paper systematically maps the field of scholarly works on the theme of youth and violent conflict in Africa. It reviews the evidentiary base of the nexus between youth and violent conflicts in Africa by interrogating the conceptual, methodological, and empirical foundations of the different explanations adduced for why and how youth participate in armed conflicts. It observes that the evidence base linking youth vulnerability and exclusion with violence is generally mixed across the board; each extant perspective offers some useful insights within its narrow conceptual and methodological contours. In addition, the social agency of youth and the power context of society are crucial to understanding the link between youth and violence, and the risk of violence in Africa. Social agency speaks to why and how youth encounter, process, interpret and act on social phenomena, including violence. It highlights the need for further research into the dynamic nature of how youth identities interact with new trends in violence and insecurity such as violent riots and protests and post-election violence, among others.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth
• vulnerability
• exclusion
• marginalisation
• violence
• conflict
• Africa

Introduction

Since the ‘New Wars’ of the 1990s, especially in the Mano River area, one question that has dominated scholarly and policy debates and also underpinned programmatic intervention on peace and security in Africa is ‘why do female and male youth resort to large-scale violence and armed uprising in Africa?’ Major armed conflicts and persistent low intensity conflicts in other parts of the world, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, etc. indicate that youth involvement in armed uprisings is never peculiar to Africa. It is also not the case that there is a natural connection between youth and violence; in fact, most young people do not engage in large-scale violence or participate in armed conflicts.

Nonetheless, the spate of violent conflicts in Africa and global demographic patterns since the 1990s put Africa and its youth at the epicentre of the scholarly and policy debates on youth and violence. Interrogating the logic of youth involvement in violent conflict in Africa is the central problematique that has dominated much of the literature on armed conflicts and increasingly mass protests over the past two decades. Consequently, a rich body of literature has developed, conditioned by specific geographical, disciplinary, and methodological orientations.

In much of the extant literature, youth vulnerability and exclusion (and/or marginalisation) has often been cited as the basis for understanding youth and their participation in violence in Africa. This can be seen from numerous scholarly analyses and commentaries, policy initiatives, and programmatic interventions on conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Africa. To this extent, youth vulnerability and exclusion has become the ‘catch phrase’, a presumed quintessential fact, in understanding and addressing why and how young people participate in violent insurgencies and armed conflicts in general.¹ However, what is the evidence for this? Does every scholar or extant work understand youth vulnerability exclusion in the same way, or even assume it to mean the same things?

This paper fulfils two objectives; first is to systematically map the field of scholarly works on the theme of youth and violent conflict in Africa. This is aimed at helping observers and analysts to gain a big picture of the topic and relevant debates, connect ideas and perspectives, and identify and understand patterns of thought and ideas and methodological assumptions and tools. Second is to interrogate the conceptual and empirical basis (evidence) of the different explanations adduced for why and how youth participate in armed conflicts and violence broadly. What does youth, vulnerability and exclusion mean and how have they been defined individually and collectively in extant literature?

Methodologically, this paper surveys a range of extant scholarly works across disciplines to map the range of evidence linking youth and violence, as well as studies focusing on specific case studies and those attempting generalised perspectives. It also weighs up the relative strengths and weaknesses of scholarly works in terms of their conception of youth and the extent to which the internal differentiation of youth is acknowledged; the argumentation logic; and the quality of data and evidence adduced. Through this it identifies the gaps, questions and issues thrown up by different perspectives and the evidence used. This paper is not an exhaustive review of all literature on violence and conflict in Africa; rather, it is a survey of the core literature on the nexus between youth and violence. The literature covered were selected based on a systematic corpus database search, and the authors’ reading and familiarity with the terrain. The corpus search involved the use of relevant themes and key words (youth, youth vulnerability, youth exclusion, youth and conflict, and youth and violence); disciplinary orientations based on the conceptual and methodological assumptions; geographic focus on Africa broadly and some countries that have recorded violent conflicts and protests involving youth (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, DRC, South Sudan, etc.); and a period from 1990 to 2019.

We adopt a clustering approach to identify and categorise extant literature on youth and violence in Africa; the clustering reflects thematic commonalities, including disciplinary, methodological and argumentation logic. Each cluster reflects the central thesis or variables adduced for youth participation in violence. This paper looks at three broad clusters of scholarly works based on dominant disciplinary alignment including, first, literature linked to the environment and demography – covering environmental stresses such as changes in population structure (youth bulge) and climate change issues and their impacts on livelihoods, food security and resource availability. The second is grievance-based literature covering issues of social injustice, violation of human rights, the absence of rule of law, and political exclusion. Third are the literature on economic issues, including poverty, deprivation, horizontal and vertical inequality, and unemployment.

The demography-environment logic of youth and violence

Africa stands out on the global demography map; the continent’s demography has attracted huge academic and policy interest, if not alarm and politicisation, in the last decade. This is linked to concerns over Africa’s increasing share of global population broadly, and more importantly, its high proportion of young people and its high fertility rates, and the implications of these factors for security, especially the incidence of violence. The presumed nexus between high youth population and the risk of violence is the underlying concern. According to the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region is projected to add more than half of the projected addition to the world’s population by 2050. This means that SSA countries would increase in population by over a billion in 2050, with the increase projected to continue through the end of the century. In fact, ‘Of the additional 2.0 billion people who may be added to the global population between 2019 and 2050, 1.05 billion (52 per cent) could be added in countries of sub-Saharan Africa.’² This implies that increasing ‘youthening’ of Africa’s population is yet to peak for another decade at least.

The demography argument is one of the underlying assumptions about the policy panic in regard to youth and violence in Africa, especially following the outbreak of armed conflict and the central role of youth in Africa in the 1990s. The primary argument is that population structure and composition have a direct impact on the risk and prevalence of armed conflict and violence, with implications for the role of youth therein.³ It sees the risk of political violence as linked to progress or decline along the Demographic Transition Continuum (DTC). The DTC marks the shift from high to low birth and death rates, with higher youth population (caused by high birth rate) accounting for higher vulnerabilities to political violence. Thus, countries with a large youth cohort, often referred to as youth bulges (defined as a situation where people between the ages of 15 and 29 years constitute over 40 per cent of all people above the of 15 years), are prone to armed conflict and violence.

Urdal posits that societies where youth comprise 35 per cent of the population are 150 per cent more likely to experience political violence.⁴ Accordingly, ‘in the demographic approach, young people fight because, quite simply, they are too many.’⁵ Goldstone contends that the bulge in youth elite population is the most important destabilising factor, leading to rebellions.⁶ Mesquida and Wiener contend that that age composition of the male population is a critical ecological/demographic factor determining a population’s tendency to engage in coalitional (group-based) violence – the ratio of the number of men ages 15 to 29 years of age versus men 30 and older in a population appears to be associated with the occurrence and severity of conflicts as measured by the number of war casualties.⁷

This perspective notes that the dynamics of human population, signposted by rates of growth, age structure and distribution exert considerable influence on where and when political violence breaks out.⁸ This risk of political violence is linked to scarcity of natural resources and services generated by youth bulge – for example, the low availability of per capita cropland and renewable fresh water occasioned by youth bulge and broader population increases. The DTC paradigm justifies Africa’s appalling record of political violence since the 1990s because of high youth population and scarcity of crop-land and renewable freshwater, given the concentration of 31 of the 36 countries with youth bulge.⁹ It sees growth in youth population leading to high resource consumption per capita, that in turn leads to increase resource scarcity and harsher resource competition, and ultimately greater risk of an outbreak of political violence.¹⁰

Variants of this perspective link youth bulge to migration, high urbanisation, unemployment and poor governance. The second stage of the demographic transition is seen as context for political violence because of a youth bulge, higher birth rates, lower mortality rates, inadequate service delivery, growing middle class, low labour market absorption.¹¹ According to Urdal, high rates of urbanisation strengthen the correlation between youth bulges and political violence; it increases the risk of political violence, especially if they are associated with other factors, such as high youth unemployment, a quasi-democratic system, and a high dependency ratio.¹² In addition, Urdal asserts that each percentage point increase in youth bulges, translates into an increase of more than four percent in conflict risk; and that developing countries in Africa facing youth bulge (where youth make up more than 35 per cent of the adult population) face a higher risk (150 per cent) of armed conflict compared with countries with different population structures.¹³

Commins argues that Africa’s rapid urbanisation is a new and underappreciated driver of state fragility – a context of deteriorating governance and prolonged political crisis or conflict – with a locus in urban areas.¹⁴ Grievances around inadequate social services in the context of heightened insecurity, crime, and lawlessness, contribute to greater levels of urban violence. This is thought to explain the rise of slums and high levels of violence in and around major cities across Africa, including Kibera (Nairobi), Karu (Abuja), Soweto (Johannesburg), Camp Luka (Kinshasa), Bonaberi (Douala), among others.¹⁵

In subsequent formulations of this perspective, there have been attempts for a more balanced and carefully nuanced interpretation of the links between youth bulge and violence. For instance, Urdal in a review of recent quantitative studies on the theme concludes that there is limited evidence that high population growth rates and land scarcity are linked to armed conflict on the country level, but only relevant at subnational levels. Furthermore, youth bulges are linked to increased risk of conflict when opportunities for young people are severely restricted in the form of low access to participation in governance, limited education, and failing economic development. He concludes that ‘large youth bulges relate not to demography alone, but to a very considerable degree also the availability of opportunities of large youth cohorts for completing an education, for getting into the labor market and for participating in governance.’¹⁶

Alfy’s analysis of rising violence in Egypt since 2011 focuses on the rise of political demography signposted by a youth bulge, rising number of unemployed and under-employed university graduates. In 2013, persons under the age of 24 years accounted for 54 per cent of the population, while young people age 15–29 years accounted for 29 per cent of total population in Egypt. In 2013, while the national unemployment rate stood at 12 per cent, it was much higher among youth; it was 40 per cent among 20–24-year-olds and 23 per cent among 25–29-year-olds, and 32 per cent among university graduates. He contends that movements such as the April 6 Movement (involved in the 2011 Revolution against Mubarak’s regime), Black Bloc (involved in resistance to the Muslim Brother government), and Football-Ultras (involved in football violence) are primarily youth movements.¹⁷ The principal bloc of participants in violence is aged between 15 and 29. In violent clashes between February 2011 and June 2013, for example, 80 per cent of the injured were aged 15–29, while 70 per cent of the dead belonged to the same cohort. The relatively high proportion of young people in Egypt has provided fuel to youth movements in recent years and has increased the likelihood that these movements will resort to violence.¹⁸

In a review of armed conflict and the participation of young people in West Africa in the 1990s, Aning and Atta-Asamoah, pinpoint the concurrent influence of the youth bulge problematic, alongside the effects of the economic downturns and environmental changes of countries in the sub-region.¹⁹ Kaplan’s study of youth in seven cities in West Africa likens the youth to lose molecules in a very unstable social fluid, with a high risk of violence. He relates the region’s youthful demography and overpopulation to the involvement of youth in criminal and political violence, as well as diseases, scarcity of resources, empowerment of private armies and drug cartels.²⁰ The cumulative urban dysfunction, according to Kaplan, inevitably disposes youth to political violence because they find liberation in violence.²¹

In total, this perspective explains the causal logic of youth and violence in Africa to be that population growth leads to high resource consumption per capita leading to deteriorated environmental conditions and to increasing resource scarcity which generates harsher resource competition leading to greater risk of violence.²²

Reviewing the demography-environment evidence

The demography-environmental perspective provides a generalised account of the nexus between youth and violence in Africa and highlights an important structural dimension and factor. The youth bulge, resource issues, and environmental stress are empirical realities in Africa, and the coincidence with high levels of armed conflict and violence warrants scrutiny. This coincidence often underpins the strong influence that some of the extant studies have had on policy thinking on the subject, especially in contributing to policy panic and overtly securitised perspectives on youth in Africa.

However, the causal logic and evidence put forward in extant literature are limited in the following ways. First, the evidence linking youth and violence is weak and indirect. Despite more refined approaches and nuanced interpretation and presentation of the causal logic, much of the evidence from the demography-environmental perspective, does not interrogate the meaning and motivation of youth involved in political violence. The focus on the sheer number of youth (youth bulge) deflects from the more important process of allocating and distributing resources in society, especially across social categories and generations; and how youths negotiate and interpret social reality, and inter-generational issues.²³ This points to the possibility of additional research to compare the experiences of resource-rich countries and resource-poor countries in Africa in relation to the youth bulge and the risk and record of youth-related armed violence.

Second, much of the evidence is quantitative in nature with strong instances of correlation between demographic and environmental stresses, and violence; however, correlation hardly proves causation. It is also of limited value in predicting the outbreak, course or outcome of armed conflict and violence.²⁴ The methodological orientation, largely based on statistical modelling with reliance on macro-level data raises serious methodological concerns as to the sources, reliability and consistency of data used. Extant datasets on Africa tend to be based on assumptions, hence suspect. There is also confusion about the appropriate level of analysis. Importantly, variables are neglected, notably political and economic factors, which have a strong influence on conflict and mediate the influence of resource and environmental factors.²⁵

Third, the definition of youth and datasets on youth, relative to national and regional contexts in Africa is inadequate. By defining youth in a strictly chronological order, the neo-Malthusian perspective wrongly generalises about the identity of youth across societies, when in fact, the meaning of youth is conditioned by specific local dynamics. A generalised notion of youth overlooks socio-cultural, economic, and political variations across societies, a fact that needs to be reflected in the definition of youth. Many of the studies use the wrong definition of youth; the 15–24 years-old benchmark is at variance with how youth is defined in Africa. This is in addition to the failure to disaggregate the notion of youth, especially to show variation between older and younger categories of youth, and between male and female youth. For instance, Honwana advances the idea of ‘Waithood’ to capture the elastic, prolonged transition between childhood and adulthood, as a better theme to explain the socio-economic and political meaning and circumstances of youth in Africa.²⁶

Fourth, while there are no generic ecological conflicts in Africa, there are ecological issues (demography, natural resources, climate change, etc.) relevant to the analysis of violence.²⁷ Even with this, a majority of the demography-environmental studies overlook or downplay the coping mechanism of youth and society as a whole, especially the capacity for inventiveness and technological progress that have vastly influenced agricultural outputs and the rate of resource substitution, extraction and management.²⁸ Underlining this human (youth) coping capacity are socio-economic and political variables which mediate the interface between youth bulge and political violence.²⁹

Finally, the demography-environmental perspective takes a linear, one-sided view on the role of youth in relation to violence in Africa. According to Gilpin ‘there are as many members of the 15–25 years old cohort working for peace, as those who perpetrate violence and human rights abusers’.³⁰ Statistically, only a small proportion of youth are combatants or perpetrators of violence; most of the youth, especially females, are either victims or avoiders of violence. There is a clear need to explore the role of young people in peacebuilding; conventional liberal perspectives of peacebuilding view young people’s contributions with suspicion but also consider them as subjects to be moulded rather than active participants in peacebuilding.³¹

Grievance-based logic of Youth and violence in Africa

This section examines socio-economic and political grievances as a structural determinant of youth involvement in violence in Africa. One of the oldest and most popular perspectives on why and how youth in Africa resort to violence is the grievance-based explanations. Grievance is defined by historical and contemporary sense of injustice, unfairness, and unaddressed deprivations. It is also about the non-representation, under-representation and outright exclusion and marginalisation in decision-making processes. The assumption is that grievances lead to frustrations and aggression.³² The causal logic is that the lack of inclusion leads to denied opportunities, which in turn leads to group-based inequalities, which feeds into frustrations that leads to aggression. Grievance-based explanation became popular in the context of armed conflict in the Mano River Basin, namely Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s. It has also been used to explain the outbreak of armed violence and insecurity, including the resort to violence by youth to agitate and protest perceived and real inequalities, injustice and exclusion in a majority of conflict in Africa, including the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Northern Mali and inter-group violence in Kenya among others.

There are two dimensions of the grievance-based cluster; the marginalisation and exclusion, and social injustice and inequality approaches. The two dimensions are mutually inclusive and overlap as reciprocal cause and effect. They individually and collectively pinpoint youth to be victims of violence, as much as perpetrators of violence. Much of the grievance-based literature affirms Galtung’s notion of Structural Violence (indirect violence).³³ Structural violence relates to the pre-eminent role of social injustice and other imbalances in the social structure and hierarchy of societies that restrict and restrain youth from achieving core human needs. The intensification of structural injustice, widespread lack of fairness and the feeling of alienation among young people provide credible argument, reasoning, and justification for using violence. The inter-generational and gender dimensions of structural violence could and do take cultural forms when expressed ideas, practices and any other aspect of a culture are used to legitimise violence in its direct or indirect form.³⁴

The marginalisation and exclusion approach sees the systematic under-representation of youth and their relative lack of voice, participation and influence in formal (government) and customary institutions and processes of decision-making as the source of grievance and reason youth abandon non-violence means of protest.³⁵ As highlighted by Stewart, group-based inequality often results in objective and subjective claims of inequality, defined by differential access to socio-economic opportunities and political privileges.³⁶ In terms of the involvement of youth in violence, the inter- and intra-group-based inequality is seen either from an inter-generational lens or inter-generational inequality overlaps with other modes of group-based inequality including along lines of ethnicity and religion.

The social injustice dimension sees marginalisation and exclusion as precursors of youth feelings of injustice. The two dimensions pinpoint individual decision making in a group and aggregated context. This considers youth as a collective with shared circumstances to understand common denominators among youth involved in political violence. Youth political violence is a direct and ‘rational’ response to marginality: youth’s rationalisation and motivation transcends the economic gains of rational choice to include the sense of belonging, participation, and empowerment.

Grievance-based arguments have been used to explain youth involvement in political violence in Sierra Leone and across Africa.³⁷ For instance, Abdullah uses a historical materialism approach to emphasise the participation of youth in political violence in Sierra Leone to be a consequence of marginalisation occasioned by failed education, unemployment and patrimonial politics.³⁸ All of this combined to create an imagined community of a homogenous youth (marked by a fusion of high school students, drop-outs and working-class youth), sharing a common lumpen culture – unemployed and unemployable youth with criminal and anti-social behaviour.³⁹ It is argued that the lumpen youth culture, emblematic of youth exclusion and marginalisation, fed into the civil war. Boas’s study on Sierra Leone also notes that ‘although as a group, these young insurgents may give an impression of menace and carelessness, when one is talking to them individually one is struck by their feeling of betrayal, of being lost and without opportunities’.⁴⁰ He concludes that almost every group involved in political violence across Africa ‘ … however distinctive, emerged as a corrupt and dysfunctional state receded, leaving behind disaffected youth with little means of achieving status or material improvement except as combatants’.⁴¹

Richards also contends that the war in Sierra Leone is nothing but a rational, agency-like expression of the youth to state decay.⁴² Youth used violence to counteract long years of socio-economic disempowerment and political marginalisation. The socio-economic marginalisation is thought to emerge from collapsed education, unemployment, and poor service delivery arising from official corruption. The political marginalisation relates to the exclusionary logic of patrimonial politics which places non-members of political class (especially youth) on the fringes of mainstream decision-making and political processes. Youth violence in Sierra Leone was neither mindless nor random, but a rational reaction to the alienation of youth by long years of patrimonial redistribution and a form of seeking inclusion and inter-generational struggle for a fairer society.⁴³

Gore and Pratten reaffirm the sense of marginalisation in youth political violence in Southern Nigeria, noting that long years of politics of plunder and prebendalism informed the emergence of youth violence.⁴⁴ They contend that ‘ … that analysis of popular responses to disorder contributes to an insurgent’ construction of the public realm in which groups marginalised and excluded challenge the logic, locations, patterns of discourse and constructions of the public goods’.⁴⁵

Diouf displays similar sentiments in his study of youth political violence in ‘post-independence’ Senegal. He argues that the post-colonial exclusion of most young people from work, education, and mainstream politics by political elites to maintain their political domination informed youth’s use of ‘Sopi’ [urban violence such as riots, religious fundamentalism, looting, and political protests] to express disillusionment with the outcome of the restoration of democratic rule.⁴⁶

Gavin’s analysis of armed violence in Ivory Coast and other African countries observes that political exclusion especially at the national level was a key factor in youth participation in political violence.⁴⁷ It identifies the panacea for youth violence to include increased economic opportunities, especially jobs, as well as widened political space for civic engagement to enable youth to fully pursue their interests and aspirations.

Olaiya also contends that youth marginalisation in West Africa is historical and that their marginalisation has only increased their role as agents of social disorder in the region.⁴⁸ This includes the ethnic and religious political clashes in Nigeria since the return to civilian rule, youth involvement in the Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote D’Ivoire civil wars, and the Boko Haram Crisis in Northern Nigeria. He argues that marginalised youth in governance and political processes act as agents of destabilisation of the democracy that they helped to build. Hansen’s analysis of the Boko Haram insurgency found that the desire to institute a moral ethical Islamic code of justice, human rights, equality and dignity against a corrupt, abusive central state inspired young people to join Boko Haram.⁴⁹ Youth participate in violence because they lack resources to participate in mainstream political processes as they are crowded out by power elites, godfathers and wealthy people.

El- Kenz in his general assessment of youth and violence across Africa makes a parallel conclusion that ‘the marginalisation and exclusion of Africa and African youth have drawn the latter into a cycle and into forms of violence, spontaneous or organised, official, or manipulated, which have cowed many of the states of the continent and which can lead to terrible collective tragedies’.⁵⁰

Reviewing grievance-based evidence

The grievance-based perspective on YOVEX and violence in Africa originates from qualitative disciplines, especially sociology, and branches of social psychology and political science. The causal logic and cross-cutting issues across most extant literature points to a socio-cultural operationalisation of youth, including the differentiation of youth by gender and other social sifters. The perspective is invaluable for pinpointing the power context of youthhood in Africa to show why and how youth is a political and politicised phenomenon.

The grievance-based explanations are also remarkable for pinpointing the historical trajectories of youth participation in violence in Africa; they see youth marginalisation and exclusion as multi-dimensional, heterogeneous, time-bound, and rooted in a historical dynamic. Youth participation in armed violence is seen as a product of historical and contemporary dynamics, and the interface between individual and collective circumstances.

The grievance-based explanation also displays a generally commendable level of analysis by combining individual-level accounts with group-level dynamics to show the evolution, course, and outcomes of youth violence. Moreover, it emphasises why, when, and how youth participate in different types of violence. In most cases, the contextual-level factors and processes, rather than generic and generalised inferences, form the basis for understanding youth participation in armed violence. Expectedly, the grievance-based explanations are rooted in a series of case studies of different types of conflicts in a variety of contexts in Africa.

This perspective also stands out for its strong emphasis on the social agency of youth in the context of armed violence. Social agency speaks to why and how youth encounter, process, interpret and act on social phenomena. There is emphasis on the internal differentiation of information, perception, and interpretation of events among youth by paying attention to their worldviews to discern the specific form and basis of their participation in political violence. Youth involved in armed violence are often rational actors with specific, often mature, understanding and interpretation of their predicament.⁵¹ In most cases, ‘youth strategies to combat social exclusion remain mostly individual, and rivalry and conflict over local and national resources have led to bitter intergroup fighting’.⁵²

More importantly, grievance-based literature emphasises the functionality of violence for youth as well as broader society in developing countries. On the one hand, violence could and does serve as ‘game-changing’ events or moments in many conflict-affected countries in Africa; in creating old and new winners and losers, in intensifying social inequalities, and in normalising particular practices and behaviours. Many countries in Africa exist in the ‘Shadow of Violence’ as latent or actual violence is used to gather wealth and privileges, secure political settlements, and as the tool for organising political and economic coalitions.⁵³ Grievance-based perspectives also direct attention to the role of violence in the lives of youth; the instrumental role violence plays in youth’s search for survival and social mobility. Boas notes that ‘although cruel, ugly, and inhuman, war is by its very nature an instrument for social and economic restructuring. It is a site for innovation … and can represent means of social integration and upward social mobility’.⁵⁴

Nonetheless, the grievance-based approaches generally appear to have had minimal influence on policy for a variety of reasons, namely their specific as opposed to generalised accounts and prescriptions; their account of youth social agencies that is often misinterpreted as justifying youth violence; and the emphasis on political issues, often at the core of violent conflicts in Africa. More research is needed to understand the extent to which extant policy initiatives and interventions address issues of youth marginalisation and exclusion, and the extent to which progress has been made or otherwise in Africa.

Given the context-specific nature of grievance-based approaches, it would appear to have limited use in explaining the increasing transnational, trans-cultural nature of emergent armed violence as well as the interconnectedness of different typologies of violence in Africa. It is not uncommon to have foreign fighters fighting far away from their immediate communities and countries for a variety of reasons, including shared ideologies (e.g., violent extremism), opportunities for material and financial gains, and inter-linked grievances and processes such as in the Mano River countries in the 1990s.⁵⁵ This underlines the need for further research and for more meta-level analysis to transcend the home community/country context of youth violence.

Similarly, grievance-based accounts are weak in explaining why and how most of youth do not participate in armed violence, even when faced with similar levels of exclusion, marginalisation and injustice. More research is needed to understand the differences between youth who embrace violence versus those that believe in non-violent approaches to effecting social change. Specifically, more studies are needed to better understand the disincentives for violence.

Finally, further research is needed to deepen the gender dimensions of youth participation in violence from a grievance-based approach. Some of extant studies and evidence do allude to aspects of this,⁵⁶ but gaps remain in the understanding of how male and female youth experience, interpret and act on marginalisation and exclusion; the ways male and female youth rationalise the use of violence; and the influence of persisting social norms about gender roles and identities in the configuration and hierarchies of armed groups. Additional inquiries are also needed to understand how post-conflict policies and peacebuilding reflect and address the gender dimensions of marginalisation and exclusion.

Economic logic of youth and violence in Africa

The economic explanation of youth participation in violence in Africa is structured around three themes/relationships: the link between macro-economic patterns (such as GDP) and the risk of violent conflict; the relationship between micro-level factors, especially individual cost-benefit analysis and the motivation for violence (and violent conflicts) among youth; and the relationship between jobs/unemployment and youth involvement in violence.

This perspective belongs to the opportunity-based literature and is rooted in classical relative deprivation theory that sees violence, including the participation of youth, as a means of redressing economic or political grievances. There is an explicit assumption of rationality (rational choice) in which the individual is thought to maximise value and utility through choice comparison and cost and benefit calculations in the pursuit of wants. In general, economic issues such as poverty, unemployment, and inequality are highlighted as a critical motive for violent action.

Proponents of this view reject causal links (or risk) between youth bulge (population structure) and the outbreak of civil war and violence.⁵⁷ Instead they advance a cost-benefit approach focused on opportunistic chances for economic advantages and riches (through looting) which explain violence broadly in Africa, and or youth violence. According to Bloomberg and Hess, recessions significantly increase the probability of internal conflict, and when combined with the occurrence of an external conflict, recessions further increase the probability of internal conflict.⁵⁸ The authors use data from 152 countries from 1950 to 1992 to estimate the joint determination of external conflict, internal conflict, and the economy. These results are obtained from estimates of a Markov probability model in which transitions between states of peace and conflict influence each other and the state of the economy. The authors contend that internal conflict, external conflict, and the state of the economy are not independent of one another. However, recessions can provide the spark for increased probabilities of internal and external conflict, which in turn raise the probability of recessions. Such dynamics are suggestive of a poverty-conflict trap-like environment.

Similarly, Bloomberg, Hess, and Thacker use panel data for over 152 countries from 1950 to 2000 to explore the inter-relationships between conflict and economic activity in Africa. The authors construct a two-period model where consumption and investment decisions are made in the presence of governments who consider initiating diversionary conflict to raise their chances of remaining in power.⁵⁹ The study argues that economies with selfish leaders and lower gains from capital formation may fall prey to engaging in avoidable conflicts thereby lowering investment and hence future growth. The authors concluded that lowering economic growth increases the risk of violent conflict, after controlling for initial conditions of geography, private, public, and human capital investment.

Couttenier and Soubeyran in their review of the literature on economic and natural factors as root causes of conflict, highlight extant works that show the variation of commodity prices as significant in the relationship between price shocks and the risk of civil war.⁶⁰ They cite Besley and Persson as showing that higher world market prices of exported commodities are strong, significant predictors of the prevalence of civil war, often as a consequence of growing government revenue, which increases the incentive to capture power.⁶¹ Similarly, higher world market prices of imported commodities increase the likelihood of civil conflict, reducing real wages and also the opportunity cost of fighting. Bruckner and Ciccone were also cited as indicating that international commodity price movements as an instrumental variable for economic conditions; civil wars are more likely to occur in countries that experience a downturn in the international price of their export commodities.⁶²

Justino assesses the usefulness of emerging evidence-based studies in advancing the current understanding of the relationship between violent conflict and chronic poverty.⁶³ Justino reviews various studies conducted in Africa and elsewhere and examines both the transmission mechanisms from violent conflict through to chronic poverty and the impact of chronic poverty on conflict. He also focuses on violent mass conflict, taking a dynamic view of both violent conflict and chronic poverty, and adopts a micro-level perspective whereby impacts on individual and household poverty, exclusion and deprivation are considered. The study argues that understanding how conflict develops at the micro-level will impact on how policies are designed and how incentives to prevent conflicts and maintain peace are structured. Justino observes that violent conflict can cause chronic poverty and contribute to the creation of poverty traps, the chronically poor are likely to suffer disproportionately from violent conflict, and violent conflict can bring benefits to some groups (including the chronically poor and youth) which may counterbalance the negative impacts. This is particularly worse for young men who are directly involved in the conflict. In turn, persistent poverty can create the grounds for increased social discontent which can lead to violent conflict and chronic poverty may lead individuals to become fighters as a form of coping with poverty itself. The author observes that violent conflict may constitute a viable alternative to unemployment for many. When joining militias or military groups, young men may get access to food and clothing as well as recognition and a sense of becoming valuable which may not be available otherwise.

Paul Collier’s econometric analysis using the Greed and Grievance model is the most prominent among economic-based literature on youth and violent conflicts in Africa. According to the Greed Model,⁶⁴ economic agendas or profit-making incentives for the leaders and members of armed groups are the most important index and cause of political violence. The opportunities to exploit lootable primary resources underlie involvement in political violence, especially in Africa.⁶⁵ Rebellion and participation in violence broadly is feasible only when the potential gain from joining is so high and the expected costs so low that rebel recruits will favour joining over alternative income earning opportunities.⁶⁶ It sees rebellion (political violence) as a quasi-criminal activity – a distinctive form of organised crime that differs from other crime in its objective, which is the predation of the rents on natural resource exports.⁶⁷

The greed model incorporates youth as a variable in political violence: the proportion of young men (youth percentage of total population) and their level of education endowment, and the presence of primary resources (as a proportion of national income) are formulated as components of the greed model. Collier undertakes a male-biological definition of youth (age 15 to 24) and argues that the possibility of recruiting youth (illiterate or semi-literate) is a major factor in the feasibility of political violence in Africa. According to Collier, the greater the number of young men, the easier and cheaper the cost of recruitment and political violence – large youth cohorts reduces recruitment costs through the abundant supply of manpower with low opportunity cost, thereby increasing the risk of armed violence.⁶⁸

Collier assumes a negative relationship between level of education and recruitment and participation in violence because increased education increases the income-earning opportunities of an individual, and results in higher chances of absorption into the formal economy and income earning opportunities. Collier links the willingness of young men to participate in political violence to their education (as measured by the average number of years of education received, with each year of education decreasing the risk of, and participation in, political violence by 20 per cent) and to their income-earning opportunities.⁶⁹ Thus, the true cause of, and participation of youth in, political violence is not explained by the popular discourse of social grievance, but the silent force of greed. This ensures that youth involved in political violence either serve the material interests of leaders of armed groups or benefit from the trickle-down effect of the groups’ predatory trade in primary commodities.⁷⁰

In later years, Collier modified the argument by moving from its earlier affirmative position on the superiority of greed over grievance to a more nuanced and balanced role of opportunism and constraints.⁷¹ For instance, Collier and Hoeffler used data from 79 large civil conflicts that occurred between 1960 and 1999 to examine how economic incentives influence the motives and opportunities driving civil war.⁷² The authors argue that several factors influence opportunities for rebellion; first is the availability of financing, particularly to the rebels. Second is the cost of rebellion, such as proxy earnings foregone in conflict whereby low forgone earnings facilitate conflict. Third is military advantage; dispersed population increases risk of conflict compared to geographically disadvantaged areas such as mountainous regions. Fourth is that an increase in population of a given country increases the risk of conflict, especially where there is a geographical advantage such as dispersed population. The study, however, finds that some geographic and demographic factors such as forest coverage, population density, and the proportion of young men aged 15 to 29 are not significant. In addition, the study observes that most proxies for grievance such as inequality, political rights, ethnic polarisation, and religious fragmentation are insignificant to war.

Regarding the relationship between violence and poverty/chronic poverty, Blattman and Miguel’s review of the literature on the causes and consequences of civil war observes that the correlation between low per capita incomes (poverty) and higher propensities for internal war and violent conflict is one of the most robust empirical relationships in the literature.⁷³ Still, the authors caution against the claims of a direct causal line from poverty to conflict, especially as the line of causation can also be drawn in reverse.

Goodhand argues that chronic insecurity increases chronic poverty, but the impacts vary according to a range of factors including age, ethnicity, gender and region.⁷⁴ He warns that classic conceptualisations of vulnerability may not apply; conflict may reverse pre-existing power relations causing new groups to become politically vulnerable. Furthermore, chronic poverty by itself is unlikely to lead to conflict except where and when combined with horizontal inequalities and social exclusion. This is particularly when they coincide with identity or regional boundaries which may increase a society’s predisposition towards violent conflict. Moreover, chronic poverty may also be a significant factor in sustaining wars as violent crime and predation become the only viable livelihood strategy for the chronically poor. Finally, he argues for the need to transcend the false dichotomy between greed and grievance, by focusing on the synergies and interaction between different motivations and opportunities along the conflict continuum.

The World Bank in the 2011 edition of the World Development Report emphasised the poor performance of countries affected by violent conflict in progress towards the millennium development goals (reducing poverty).⁷⁵ It highlighted the impact of violent conflict on socio/economic development – for every three years a country is affected by major violence, poverty reduction lags behind by 2.7 per cent, and on average, countries that experienced major violence between 1981 and 2005 had a poverty rate of 21 per cent or higher compared with countries that experienced no major violence.

Justino, and Addison et al 2010 also conclude that violent conflict intensifies and perpetuates chronic poverty due to the destruction of infrastructure and institutions; the loss of assets, income and access to markets; the break-up of communities and social networks; and the fall in social service spending.⁷⁶ The authors emphasise the importance of social networks as critical safety nets for many poor citizens in developing countries (Africa). In many conflict situations, such social safety nets (social capital) are the immediate casualties, thereby intensifying poverty. It is contended that displaced persons experience increased difficulties in gaining employment and livelihoods as well as greater risks of malnutrition and lower educational attainment.

In the same vein, Rohwerder’s review of the literature notes that there is consensus in the literature that conflict impacts on poverty, but evidence on how this impact occurs is often limited, unsystematic, and sometimes contradictory.⁷⁷ She emphasises the critical importance of context, notwithstanding the suggestion in recent evidence that violent conflict causes and intensifies poverty and its persistence. She observes that violent conflict contributes to poverty by causing damage to infrastructure, institutions and production; the destruction of assets; the break-up of communities and social networks; forced displacement; increased unemployment and inflation; changes in access to and the relationship with local exchange, employment, credit and insurance markets; falls in spending on social services; and death and injury to people.

The centrality of economic issues and processes in youth participation in violence have also been highlighted by other scholars. For instance, Uddin and Uddin link rising tensions and violent clashes (such as communal clashes, organised crime like kidnapping and human trafficking, Boko Haram violent extremism, and armed insurgency in the Niger Delta) in Nigeria to rising unemployment (which increased from 21.1 per cent in 2010 to 23.9 per cent in 2011 with youth unemployment at over 50 per cent).⁷⁸

Some African scholars, using qualitative analysis, pinpoint the economic and material conditions of youth involved in violence, albeit in the context of important socio-political processes, in Africa. They highlight that the hordes of jobless and unemployable youth arising from failed development policies, corruption, and collapse of public services (especially education and technical skills training) become vulnerable to being mobilised, including for violence and crime. The impact of economic changes, for example, specifically disempowerment, arising from the implementation of structural adjustment policies have been identified as the basis of recurring youth involvement in violence in Nigeria.⁷⁹

It is contended that the extensive cut-backs in public spending on youth-related services, especially education, transformed and intensified the nature of student violence in Nigeria in the 1990s. Onuoha pinpoints economic vulnerability factors rather than social injustice as the main factor driving youth participation in violent extremism.⁸⁰ He argues that social-economic factors namely unemployment, poverty, illiteracy and weak family structures contribute to vulnerability of young people joining Boko Haram. He sees Boko Haram as consisting of largely disaffected youth as well as unemployed high school and university graduates from Northern Nigeria.

According to a study of youth and community violence in Dar es Salam, Tanzania Outwater et al found linkages between youth unemployment and violent crime and community violence.⁸¹ They highlight youth employment, through employment creation, working with youth in groups, and creating an enabling environment for youth small enterprise, as critical to the promotion of economic equality and functional independence. Youth employment is therefore a potentially effective way to decrease deaths by lynching and vigilantism.

Oteng-Ababio makes a similar observation in the analysis of youth and urban gangs and violence in Ghana’s major cities. For instance, persons involved in land-related clashes (as members of the land-guard) in Accra are typically young (17–40 years), unemployed and unemployable (without skills except the capacity for violence) and hired for a fee to protect or unleash violence to secure contested landed properties.⁸²

Many of the youth involved in violence are deemed to lack any coherent political ideology. Rather, involvement in violence is motivated by pecuniary gains such as money, employment, looting and other materials items. Momoh argues that the participation of area boys and youth broadly in political violence in Nigeria is underscored by the attendant economic opportunity for looting and material gains, as opposed to any shared political objectives or vision.⁸³ He concludes that ‘their [area boys’] political consciousness has not moved beyond spontaneity and fatalism.’ O’Brien also notes that students in West Africa are neither rioters nor Marxists (in spite of the use of Marxist rhetoric), but people who consider looting opportunities during demonstrations as a chance to give expression to a voice of protest and whose main priority is securing state employment.⁸⁴

In recent years, the economic perspective on youth violence has manifested in a focus on employment and unemployment issues; the lack of jobs and livelihoods has been highlighted as a key factor in youth participation in violence.⁸⁵ The World Bank, through its World Development Report (2007) emphasised economic and material conditions of youth as the ultima ratio in understanding youth involvement in political violence in Africa.⁸⁶ Thus, young people are thought to participate in violence as a form of economic activity (jobs) to earn livelihoods.

According to Blattman and Annan, job programmes are designed to increase socio-political integration of young people and to deter high-risk men from crime and violence in many fragile states.⁸⁷ Inevitably, most fragile states are littered with some form of public works scheme, training, or other employment intervention for young men, and it is also the reason most Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration programmes have a heavy employment component. Youth employment programmes are introduced on the three assumptions: that combatants and fighters are rational actors and violence rises and falls with the opportunity cost of participation; more lawful employment will decrease incentives for recruitment for violence; and increasing employment opportunities will promote socio-political integration into society.⁸⁸

All of this informs the plethora of studies, policies, programmes, and interventions focusing on youth employment in the last decade. This has been reinforced by emergent studies on youth unemployment that have has often attracted and reinforced panic policy responses because of fears and prediction of looming increases in youth violence. Importantly, issues of youth employment have been discussed and policies and programmes crafted implicitly or explicitly as a conflict prevention and armed violence reduction strategy.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) notes that higher youth growth rates create challenges of absorption into education and labour markets in Africa. A 10 per cent increase in youth population between 1980 and 2010 is estimated to have triggered a six per cent increase in youth unemployment.⁸⁹ It also observes that while youth unemployment in SSA reflects global trends, African youth face additional peculiar challenges due to weak national labour market and high poverty levels.⁹⁰ Also, the rates of labour participation and transition from education to work is higher for male youth; female youth face higher levels of unemployment.⁹¹ Due to a variety of structural factors, youth unemployment is estimated to be higher among educated young people in Africa.

While there is a general perception that unemployment is a major challenge among youth in Africa, recent studies point to youth under-employment and low productivity as the more serious challenge. It is estimated that ‘real unemployment in low-income Africa is only 3%; even in middle-income countries outside of Southern Africa, unemployment is not high’.⁹² Also, about 16 per cent of employed youth are in wage jobs and over 80 per cent employed in the informal sector.⁹³ It is projected that over the next decade, only about 25 per cent of youth will find wage labour with only a small fraction being formal and the majority of youth will continue to find work in the informal sector.⁹⁴

Reviewing economic-based evidence

The economic logic of youth violence is rooted in economic theory with assumptions of economic rationality on the part of youth involved in violence in Africa. The rational choice assumptions state that youth involved in violence weigh cost and benefits of involvement, and participation in violence is seen to offer more rewards, especially livelihoods, access to resources and other material gains. There is methodological plurality among proponents of this perspective; on the one hand, there is the high-profile econometrics-based approach which uses statistical modelling to generate correlation and inferences. On the other hand, there are the low-profile variants that use qualitative approaches such as interviews, focus group discussions, purposeful sampling, and life-course methods to generate inferences and findings.

In the quantitative-based variants (especially the greed and opportunity models), the definition of youth involved in Africa is restricted to people age 15–24 years. The focus is often on classical rebellion, armed conflict and insurgencies, and aspires to a generalised explanation. In other less profile and qualitatively-based variants, the definition of youth is often more fluid, often disaggregates youth (especially by gender, social class, and other identity sifters), and it tends to focus on specific contexts, reflecting socio-cultural interpretations. The focus is on a variety of violence, especial sub-national violence (crime, militia, vigilante, and communal and community violence). Finally, the econometric-based variant is generally dominated by non-African scholars, compared with the qualitative-based variant that features mostly African scholars.

Notwithstanding these differences, the econometric-based variants enjoy higher visibility and huge influence on policy thinking and debate. This is evidenced by the huge policy focus and plethora of interventions on youth employment and jobs in Africa in the last decade. Part of the strong policy influence is rooted in the ability of this perspective to narrow and perhaps simplify youth violence to a single issue or factor. It also aligns with global economic and development policies and programmes including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also provides a supposed target group, typically young people age 15–24 years, with generic employment schemes such as labour-intensive infrastructural projects, ICT training, and other vocational skills training.

The economic perspective faces a variety of limitations and criticisms: first, rationality transcends economic gains to include social and political variables, including social status, political participation, and physical security. It is also complicated and almost impossible to isolate economic gains from socio-political calculations associated with youth involved in political violence. Although it might be argued that economic gains eventually lead to attainment of other objectives such as social, political, and physical security, this presupposes a linear connection. There is a need to go beyond the economic motives that underline rebel activities and focus on the roots of youth political ideologies including the historical context. Moreover, it is important to nuance the motives of rebels by differentiating the rationale of individual(s) in rebel movements, including the youth who form majority of rebel movements, from that of the collective community.

Second, Collier’s greed thesis, though useful for its part-focus on youth as a variable in the greed model, overlooks (or narrows) the social agency of young people involved in violence in Africa. Youth are conscious participants in violence, with a specific understanding and interpretation of events and social reality. Third, Collier’s focus on education as the mediating factor in the participation of youth in violence is questionable and lacking empirical basis. Admittedly, education could enhance awareness of potential loss of socio-economic opportunities, but it hardly guarantees value achievement in class, status, or power. To posit that every single year of education decreases participation in political violence by 20 per cent is to adjudge participants in political violence as uneducated. As shown by recent studies on youth employment in Africa, unemployment is highest among educated youth, thereby increasing the prospect of frustration and aggression.

Fourth, methodologically, the empirical base (evidence) for linking jobs and employment with violence (or violence reduction) is thin, especially at individual (micro) levels outside of the United States.⁹⁵ It is claimed that in developing countries, evidence tends to come from country- and district-level analysis of income shocks on crime and conflict, as opposed to more context-grounded sources.⁹⁶ For example, the analysis of former combatants in Liberia found that expectation of future cash transfers, rather than employment, was influential in deterring illicit and mercenary activities – there was no evidence that employment affects nonmaterial violence or socio-political integration.

Moreover, different criminal activities, including typologies of violence, have different opportunity costs of time, and armed groups might not be labour constrained.⁹⁷ Methodologically still, the statistical base of the econometric analysis is questionable due to the paucity of official and reliable data about demography, unemployment and literacy rates, crime and violence records, and detailed labour market information in many African countries.

Fifth, the use of youth employment schemes as a peacebuilding tool by national and donor governments, and by international organisations, has excluded an assessment of the impact which such interventions have on local and national-level conflict. In fact, most evaluations have been input-oriented, focusing on implementation, and meeting narrowly-defined objectives, as opposed to long-term impacts on the environment and on whole communities. Walton also notes that a small number of evaluations that have examined the wider impact of job creation initiatives have found that their effects beyond direct beneficiaries are minimal.⁹⁸

Sixth, the economic perspective reduces, quite wrongly, the cause and link between YOVEX and violence to labour market access and participation. It ignores the multiplicity of factors and the dynamic produced by their interaction, especially between structural and proximate factors. According to Bushman et al, and Brett and Specht, it is the combination of various factors operating at different levels that explains youth participation in violence.⁹⁹ In this sense, Brown and Stewart note that violent conflict and by extension the participation of youth is most likely when political and socioeconomic horizontal inequalities exist simultaneously.¹⁰⁰ Economic and social inter-group inequalities (horizontal Inequalities) provide the conditions that lead to dissatisfaction among the general population and, consequently, give rise to the possibilities of political mobilisation, but political exclusion is likely to trigger conflict by giving group leaders a powerful motive to organise in order to gain support. Conflict is likely to erupt in such a situation because the political inequalities motivate leaders to mobilise to gain power, while the socioeconomic inequalities provide potential followers with a powerful grievance.

Furthermore, extant economic perspectives on the motivation for violence are incomplete, untested and lacking empirical predictions; thus, there is a need to focus on new questions, econometric methods, and data.¹⁰¹ Some of the core theoretical problems remain unresolved, especially the sources of armed group cohesion amid pervasive collective-action problems, and the role of ideology and identity in reducing free riding within armed groups. The other methodological and empirical limitations identified by Blattman and Miguel include: the need for cross-country regressions to distinguish between competing explanations using more credible econometric methods for establishing causality; convincing causal identification of key relationships across economic literature is rare; robustness of alternative specifications or assumptions is seldom explored; measurement errors are rarely addressed; an absence of evidence about particular effects has often been interpreted as evidence of absence; and theories of individual or armed group behaviour are tested at the country level despite obvious aggregation difficulties.¹⁰²

Finally, the economic logic of youth violence in Africa generalises about young people in Africa or uses narrow criterion, often education, to disaggregate youth cohort. This is evidenced by Collier’s exclusive focus on male youth, and their level of education in relation to the risk of rebellion and violence. The role of female youth in subnational youth is also missing in some of the qualitative variant of the economic perspective. Yet empirical evidence from DDR programmes and the profiles of armed groups and their members show the presence of female youth and educated and illiterate youth. Therefore, many of the employment schemes hardly disaggregate participants based on gender, ethnicity, or religion, which are often the basis of marginalisation and exclusion and inequality in Africa.¹⁰³ Most jobs programmes are also male-oriented; more male youth are targeted because of underlying fear and panic about violence. It becomes important to examine the distinction between different gender and age impacts of violent conflicts, in particular the differentiation between male and female needs in conflict contexts, between male and female perceptions of conflict and between different needs and different motivations across generations.

Conclusion

Overall, we make several key observations from the survey of evidence and explanations for why young people resort to large-scale violence in Africa. First is that the evidence base linking YOVEX with violence is generally mixed across the board; each extant perspective offers some useful insights within its narrow conceptual and methodological contours. Yet, each perspective suffers from methodological and conceptual linearity. Hence, no single perspective adequately explains (in a holistic way) the link between youth and violence in Africa. Extant studies are too embedded in traditional disciplinary orientations in conceptual and methodological terms.

Second, economic (especially unemployment) perspectives and demographic approaches enjoy higher visibility and huge influence on policy thinking and debate. Part of the strong policy influence is rooted in the ability of these perspectives to narrow and perhaps simplify youth violence to a single issue or factor. They also align with global economic and development policies and programmes including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and provide a supposed target group, typically young people age 15–24 years, with generic employment schemes such as labour-intensive infrastructural projects and vocational skills training as armed violence reduction strategies. However, youth bulges are linked to increased risk of conflict only when opportunities for young people are severely restricted in the form of low access to participation in governance, limited education, failing economic development, and unequal access to resources at local levels. The risk is further heightened by exposure to radical ideologies and groups. Across the economic and demographic perspectives, there is linearity of causation; there is a unidirectional emphasis on exploring how economic issues and demographic trends cause violence.

Conversely, there is little or no focus on how violence and insecurity reshapes economic and demographic patterns. Job and employment creation schemes have dominated policy and programmatic responses to YOVEX and violence in Africa. However, the theoretical and the empirical case for using youth employment programmes as an exclusive tool for reducing violent conflict are extremely weak. Few donor programmatic interventions have been adequately evaluated and their evidence of success is usually limited to demonstrating increases in employment levels, with little effort made to assess the impact on conflict and the risk of armed violence. Also, youth unemployment rates, youth bulges, and resource scarcity or endowments are no predictor of YOVEX and violence. Seemingly structural and proximate causes of YOVEX and violence are modulated by coping strategies and activities which rely on social networks, capital, and informal sector activities.

Third, the majority of extant writings focus predominantly on Sub-Saharan Africa and are too national and sometimes generalised in their levels of analysis; it is only in recent years that scholarship has started to focus on youth vulnerability and exclusion issues in North Africa. Most of the extant studies are limited to micro-level analysis of the incentives and disincentives for violence at individual and household level for male and female youth. Within SSA, most extant literature focuses on West Africa, and more recently on East and Southern Africa. The heavy focus on SSA (West Africa) reflects the prevalence of violence and insecurity, including the central roles of youth and youth issues, from the 1990s.

Fourth, most extant perspectives and studies over-generalise about youth and fail to disaggregate youth into different types by gender and other social sifters. In fact, much of existing evidence speaks to male youth in relation to violence in Africa; very few studies capture the gender dimension of youth participation and use of violence, as well as the experiences of female youth in Africa. Moreover, the needs and levels and forms of socioeconomic vulnerabilities and political exclusion differ among different categories of youth, for example between literate and illiterate, rural and urban, employed and unemployed, and older and younger youth.

Fifth, there is a general tendency for a ‘problem-solving’ approach that solely looks at what is wrong and where things went wrong, rather than exploring alongside what works in preventing and addressing YOVEX and violence. In short, too much extant research and analysis focuses on fragile and conflict-affected contexts/countries, whilst ‘zones’ of peace and stability in relation to YOVEX and violence are under-researched. Also, current analysis of youth socioeconomic vulnerabilities and exclusion is too driven or prompted by the links to violence and conflicts, with little focus on other (non-violent) outcomes of socioeconomic vulnerabilities and political exclusion.

Finally, the social agency of youth and the power context of society are crucial to understanding the link between youth and violence and the risk of violence in Africa. Social agency speaks to why and how youth encounter, process, interpret and act on social phenomena, including violence. The power context gives youth bulge and other demographic indicators their meaning and significance in relation to violence. Exploring the worldview of young people is the gateway to discerning the specific form and basis of their participation in political violence.

The above observations suggest that research on why and how youth participate in armed conflicts and large-scale violence remains an ongoing concern and requires further studies to strengthen the evidential foundations. More research is needed into the dynamic nature of how youth identities interact with new trends in violence and insecurity such as violent riots and protests and post-election violence, among others. For instance, further research could interrogate if and how social media, counter–radicalisation measures and pandemics are exacerbating (or alleviating) the socio-economic conditions of young people, in relation to violence, in Africa. In addition, more cross-disciplinary, comparative studies are needed, especially those that compare youth participation in armed violence in two or more contexts using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methodologies and combining micro and macro-level analysis. Finally, more systematic research of youth in ‘zones’ of peace and stability are needed. These are contexts where few or no youth are involved in organised armed violence, or where most of the youth are actively promoting non-violent alternatives. This is needed to better understand the disincentives for violence by exploring what forms of violence are prevented, and how, and to elaborate effective measures for reducing and managing youth vulnerability and exclusion.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank colleagues at the African Leadership Centre (Adeoti Dipeolu, Alfred Muteru, and Jacob Kamau) who assisted with some of the literature search and contributed to the analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) (301198).

Notes on contributors

Olawale Ismail

Olawale Ismail (‘Wale) Ismail is a Senior Research Fellow/Lecturer at the African Leadership Centre, King’s College London. ‘Wale previously worked at International Alert; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI); the Conflict, Security and Development Group of King’s College University of London; and the Social Science Research Council in New York. ORCiD Identifier: 0000-0003-4751-4634

’Funmi Olonisakin

’Funmi Olonisakin is Professor of Security, Leadership & Development at the African Leadership Centre (ALC), School of Global Affairs, King’s College London. She has served as founding Director of the ALC and was Director of the Conflict, Security and Development Group (CSDG) at King’s College London from 2003 to 2013. ORCiD Identifier: 0000-0002-0787-6203.

Notes

1. Ismail et al 2009, ‘Youth Vulnerability and Exclusion in West Africa’.

2. UNDESA 2019 ‘World Population Prospects 2019 Highlights’, pp. 1–2 & 6; and UNFPA 2014 ‘State of the World’s Population 2014: Factsheet’, p.1.

3. See Gilpin, 2016. ‘Bomb or Boon’; Idrees, et al. 2015. ‘Youth Bulge, a Forecast of Violence in Developing Countries’; Mesquida and Wiener 1999 ‘Male Age Composition and the Severity of Conflicts’; and Homer-Dixon 1994 ‘Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict’.

4. Urdal 2006 ‘A clash of generations? Youth bulges and political violence’.

5. UNDP 2005 ‘Youth and Violent Conflict’, p. 19.

6. Goldstone 1991 ‘Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World’.

7. Mesquida, and Wiener 1999 ‘Male Age Composition and the Severity of Conflicts’; and Mesquida and 1996 ‘Human Collective Aggression’.

8. Cincotta, Engelman and Anastasion, 2003. ‘The Security Demographic’, p. 12.

9. Ibid: 48.

10. Gleditsch 1998 ‘Armed Conflict and the Environment’, p.383; and Homer-Dixon 1994 ‘Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict’.

11. Goldstone, Kaufman and Duffy Toff 2012 ‘Political Demography’, p. 9.

12. Urdal 2006 ‘A clash of generations? Youth bulges and political violence’, p. 609.

13. Ibid, p. 613.

14. Commins 2011 ‘Urban Fragility and Security in Africa.’

15. Ibid.

16. Urdal 2011, ‘Demography and Armed Conflict’, pp. 1–2.

17. Alfy 2016 ‘Rethinking the Youth Bulge and Violence’.

18. Abdalla 2016 ‘Youth Movements in the Egyptian Transformation’.

19. Aning and Atta-Asamoah 2011 ‘Demography, Environment and Conflict in West Africa’.

20. Kaplan 1994 ‘The Coming Anarchy’, p. 3.

21. Ibid, pp. 2–3.

22. Gleditsch 1998 ‘Armed Conflict and the Environment’, p.383.

23. Ismail and Alao 2007 ‘Youth in the Interface of Development and Security’, p. 42.

24. Fraser and Hilker 2009 ‘Youth Exclusion, Violence, Conflict, and Fragile States’.

25. Gleditsch 1998 ‘Armed Conflict and the Environment’.

26. Honwana 2013 ‘Youth and Revolution in Tunisia’.

27. Porto 2002 ‘Contemporary Conflict Analysis in Perspective’, p. 32.

28. Gleditsch 1998 ‘Armed Conflict and the Environment’, p. 383.

29. Hauge and Ellingsen 1998 ‘Beyond Environmental Security’.

30. Gilpin, 2016 ‘Bomb or Boon’, p. 110.

31. Berents, and McEvoy-Levy 2015 ‘Theorising Youth and Everyday Peace (Building)’.

32. Gurr 1970 ‘Why Men Rebel’.

33. Galtung 1969 `Violence, Peace and Peace Research’; and Galtung 1971 `A Structural Theory of Imperialism’.

34. Galtung 1990 ‘Cultural Violence’.

35. Sommers 2007 ‘West Africa’s Youth Employment Challenge’; and Sommers 2009 ‘Africa’s Young Urbanites’.

36. Stewart 2008 ‘Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict’.

37. Boas 2007 ‘Marginalized Youth’; Abdullah and Muana, 1998 ‘The Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone’; Beall and Piron 2005 ‘DFID Social Exclusion Review’; Honwana and De Boeck 2005 ‘Makers and Breakers’; and Durham 2000 ‘Youth and the Social Imagination in Africa’.

38. Abdullah 2005a ‘I am a Rebel. Youth Culture and Violence in Sierra Leone’.

39. Abdullah 2005b ‘Youth Culture and Rebellion’; Ishmail 1997 ‘Subaltern Reactions’.

40. Boas 2007 ‘Marginalized Youth’, p. 43.

41. Ibid, p. 46.

42. Richards 1996 ‘Fighting for the Rain Forest’.

43. Peters and Richards 1998 ‘Why we fight’, p. 187.

44. Gore and Pratten 2003 ‘The Politics of Plunder’.

45. Ibid, p. 213.

46. Diouf 1996 ‘Urban Youth and Senegalese Politics’; and Diouf 2001 ‘Engaging Postcolonial Cultures’.

47. Gavin 2008 ‘Africa’s Restless Youth’.

48. Olaiya 2014 ‘Youth and Ethnic Movements and Their Impacts on Party Politics’.

49. Hansen 2009; 2013; 2015. Hansen 2009 ‘Somalia – Grievance, Religion, Clan, and Profit’; Hansen 2013 ‘Al-Shabaab in Somalia’; and Hansen 2015 ‘Boko Haram: Religious Radicalism and Insurrection in Northern Nigeria’.

50. El- Kenz 1996 ‘Youth and Violence’, pp. 56–57.

51. Peters and Richards 1998 ‘Why we fight’.

52. Nolte 2004 ‘Identity and violence: the politics of youth’, p. 63.

53. North et al 2013 ‘In the Shadow of Violence’.

54. Boas 2007 ‘Marginalized Youth’, p. 40.

55. HRW 2005 ‘Youth, Poverty and Blood’.

56. See Coulter 2008 ‘Female Fighters in the Sierra Leone War’; and Coulter 2009 ‘Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers’.

57. Fearon and Laitin 2003 ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War’; and Collier and Hoeffler 2004 ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War.’

58. Blomberg and Hess 2002 ‘The temporal links between conflict and economic activity’.

59. Blomberg, Hess and Thacker 2006 ‘On the conflict–poverty nexus’. Economics and Politics’.

60. Couttenier and Soubeyran 2013 ‘An Overview of the Roots of Civil Wars’.

61. Besley and Persson 2008 cited in Couttenier and Soubeyran 2013 ‘An Overview of the Roots of Civil Wars’.

62. Bruckner and Ciccone 2010 cited in Couttenier and Soubeyran 2013 ‘An Overview of the Roots of Civil Wars’.

63. Justino 2006 ‘On the links between violent conflict and chronic poverty’.

64. See Inde De Soysa 2002 ‘Paradise Is a Bazaar?’. We acknowledge the existence of other variants of the Greed model, especially that of Indre De Soysa that differs from Collier’s version based on the measurability of indices of lootable resources.

65. Collier and Hoeffler 2001 ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil Wars’.

66. Collier 2000a ‘Doing Well out of War’; and Collier 2004 ‘Development and Security’.

67. Collier 2000a ‘Doing Well out of War’.

68. Ibid.

69. Collier 2000b ‘Rebellion as a Quasi-Criminal Activity’.

70. Ibid.

71. Collier 2004 ‘Development and Security’.

72. Collier and Hoeffler 2004 ‘Greed and Grievance in Civil War.’

73. Blattman and Miguel 2010 ‘Civil War’.

74. Goodhand 2001 ‘Violent Conflict and Chronic Poverty’; and Goodhand 2003 ‘Enduring Disorder and Persistent Poverty’.

75. The World Bank 2011 ‘World Development Report 2011ʹ; and World Bank 2007 ‘World Development Report 2007ʹ.

76. Justino 2010 ‘War and Poverty’; and Addison et al 2010 ‘Fragile states, conflict and chronic poverty’.

77. Rohwerder 2014 ‘The impact of conflict on poverty’.

78. Uddin and Uddin 2013 ‘Causes, Effects and Solutions to Youth Unemployment Problems’.

79. Adejumobi 2000 ‘Structural Adjustment, Students’ Movement’; Momoh 2000 ‘Youth Culture and Area Boys in Lagos’; Ya’u 2000 ‘The Youth, Economic Crises and Identity Transformation’; and Olukoshi 1999 ‘State, Conflict and Democracy in Africa’.

80. Onuoha 2014 ‘Why Do Youth Join Boko Haram?’

81. Outwater et al 2015 ‘Youth Unemployment, Community Violence’.

82. Oteng-Ababio 2016 ‘Beyond Poverty and Criminalization’.

83. Momoh 2000 ‘Youth Culture and Area Boys in Lagos’.

84. O’Brien 1996 ‘A Lost Generation? Youth Identity and State Decay in West Africa’.

85. Ismail, Fortune and Stephen 2015 ‘Rethinking Youth, Livelihoods and Fragility in West Africa’; Batmanglich and Enria 2004 ‘Real Jobs in Fragile Contexts’; and Ismail et al 2009, ‘Youth Vulnerability and Exclusion in West Africa’.

86. World Bank 2007 ’World Development Report 2007ʹ; and World Health Organisation 2015 ‘Preventing Youth Violence’.

87. Blattman and Annan 2015 ‘Can Employment Reduce Lawlessness and Rebellion?’

88. Ibid.

89. ILO 2012a ‘Africa’s Response to the Youth Employment Crisis’, p. 9; and ILO 2012b ‘The Youth Employment Crisis’.

90. ILO 2012a ‘Africa’s Response to the Youth Employment Crisis’, p. 2; ILO 2012 c ‘Youth Employment Interventions in Africa’; and ILO 2013 ‘Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013ʹ.

91. Gupte, Lintelo and Barnett 2014 ‘Understanding “Urban Youth” and the Challenges They Face’ p. 10.

92. Fox and Thomas 2016 ‘Africa’s got Work to Do: A Diagnostic of Youth Employment Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa’.

93. Filmer and Fox 2014 ‘Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa’, pp.4–5.

94. Ibid.

95. Cramer 2010 ‘Unemployment and Participation in Violence’; Walton 2010 ‘Youth, Armed Violence, and Job Creation Programs’; and Blattman and Annan 2015 ‘Can Employment Reduce Lawlessness and Rebellion?’.

96. Blattman and Annan 2015 ‘Can Employment Reduce Lawlessness and Rebellion?’

97. Ibid.

98. Walton 2010 ‘Youth, Armed Violence, and Job Creation Programs’.

99. Bushman et al 2016 ‘Youth violence: What we know and what we need to know’; and Brett and Specht 2004 ‘Young Soldiers. Why They Choose to Fight’.

100. Brown and Stewart 2015 ‘Economic and Political Causes of Conflict’.

101. Blattman and Miguel 2010 ‘Civil War’.

102. Ibid

103. Sommers 2006 ‘Youth and Conflict: A Brief Review of Available Literature’.