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e Outcast Majority
WAR, DEVELOPMENT, AND YOUTH IN AFRICA
Marc Sommers
e University of Georgia Press
Athens and London
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Published by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia
www.ugapress.org
© by Marc Sommers
Photographs © by Marc Sommers
All rights reserved
Set in ./ Adobe Caslon Pro by Melissa Bugbee Buchanan
Printed and bound by omson-Shore
e paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
Most University of Georgia Press titles are
available from popular e-book vendors.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
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Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
. Demography and Alienation
. e Wartime Template
. Moving Forward
. e Development Response
. Warlords and Stovepipes
. Toward Youth Inclusion: A Framework for Change
Notes
References
Index
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Illustrations
FIGURES
. School enrollment ratios in Angola,
. School enrollment ratios in Burundi,
TAB LE S
. Net attendance ratios, by gender and education level
. United Nations denitions of young people by age
MAP
Africa
PHOTOGRAPHS
Female youth at a makeshift secondary
school in Mogadishu,
Two Sierra Leonean male youth outside
a grocery store, Freetown,
Two male youth soldiers in wartime Sierra Leone,
Picture drawn on wall by child soldiers, Liberia,
Malnourished children in front of two mothers, Burundi,
Ex-combatant in front of his house, Burundi,
Unmarried mother in postwar Sierra Leone,
Unemployed male youth passing time, Juba,
Unmarried mother at her outdoor hair salon,
Kenema, Sierra Leone,
Four youth in Burundi,
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Preface
is book is born of a growing sense that the status quo won’t work. Enor-
mous youth cohorts containing many who feel socially sidelined calls for a
response that, at best, is sporadically seen. e too-common separateness of
many ordinary youth shines a harsh light on hallowed development concepts
like “community” and “civil society.” Popular macroeconomic remedies for
postwar African states tend to run counter to youth ambitions, toward devel-
oping rural agriculture and the formal sector while youth increasingly rush
into cities and the informal economy. Domestic politics and other inuences,
moreover, frequently lead powerful donor agencies to develop priorities in
faraway headquarters oces that are not the priorities of youth majorities.
Often funds and activities are funneled into sectoral “stovepipes” or “silos”
that determine in advance what will be done. People making policies that
will aect youth may have little or no direct interaction with them. Elemental
concerns like class separation, gender dierence, and police behavior may be
sidestepped. Rationales for programs available to tiny minorities of youth
populations may be questionable or unclear. And once initiatives get to the
eld, a pronounced orientation toward results usually ensues: countable
indicators, outputs, and outcomes determine, to a large degree, what will
constitute success. e insular process may make it dicult to gure out
whether or not the initiatives left a positive, negative, or negligible impact
on the people known as beneciaries and the many more who didn’t make
the cut.
e presence of unprecedented numbers of young people in developing
countries is not the most signicant challenge to governments and interna-
tional development agencies. eir alienation is. Exclusion is structured into
education and cultural systems: most youth in many countries are unlikely to
get to secondary school or gain acceptance as adults. Wars exacerbate their
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xii PREFACE
sense of separation, and not just by distancing them from traditional mores,
customs, and practices. ey also accelerate change. In many ways, youth
in war and postwar Africa are learning new skills, assuming new identities,
shifting to urban areas in large numbers, and shedding, when they can, tra-
ditional cultural mandates that are conning or seem passé. Conjuring male
youth as dangerous and overlooking female youth doesn’t square with realities
in which young people, among many other things, resist engagement in vio-
lence, develop remarkable talents, and experience inclusion within excluded
worlds. e world of war is terrible and transformative, inviting realizations
and providing opportunities to rework what it means to be young in Africa
today: how you become an adult and relate to the opposite sex, who you
listen to, how you deal with your past, what you do, where you hope to go.
e Outcast Majority aims to shed penetrating light on the lives of war-
aected African youth and the workings of international development. e
eort begins with a discussion of the conditions, experiences, abilities, and
forces that shape and propel the lives of African youth today, particularly
those undergoing or emerging from war. ey are contrasted with forces that
inuence and constrain today’s international development aid enterprise. It
ends by addressing the gap that lies between, proposing a framework for
transforming established practice and empowering severely underestimated
young people in a way that promises to make aid signicantly more relevant,
eective, and inclusive generally and specically with regard to youth in
war-aected Africa and elsewhere.
is book’s broad scope integrates two main sources of material. e
rst is interview data with youth in many war-aected African countries,
African government and international agency ocials, and development,
youth, and evaluation experts. e second is archival research into the many
subjects and concerns that make up the book’s coverage. e collective result
is complementary: a series of passages featuring in-depth, rsthand analysis
drawn from eldwork in an array of countries and contexts interwoven into
a narrative that covers a wide range of critical concerns.
e Outcast Majority invites policy makers, practitioners, academics, stu-
dents, and others to think about three commanding contemporary issues—
war, development, and youth—in new ways. It encourages thoughtful re-
ection on what should be done for booming populations of youth, and not
just those in nations aected by conict in sub-Saharan Africa. In today’s
increasingly youth-dominated world, the issues and proposed reforms detailed
here are relevant to other places where vast and vibrant youth cohorts reside.
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