seeing like a young citizen: youth and participatory ...pubs.iied.org/pdfs/g03189.pdf · l seeing...

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Seeing like a young citizen:youth and participatorygovernance in Africa 1by ROSEMARY McGEE and JESSICA GREENHALF

A girl and boy lounge against a wall, their stares vacant, and theirfaces etched with boredom. Nails are filed, trainer laces played

with, gum chewed. In the background, one adult types madly at adesk without ever looking up and another strides around, looking

busy and efficient, but never looking in their direction...

An adult puppet-mistresspulls the strings of a younggirl puppet, walking her up

a conference hall to thestage. There the puppet

curtsies and hands over arolled-up speech to an

adult dignitary, who patsher on the head before she

is puppeted away...

A tight circle of adults surrounds agirl, propelling her from one to

the other, from pillar to post. Sherebounds around the circle,

looking increasingly dizzy andconfused. Her mouth is sealed

with masking tape...

Illustrations: Regina Faul-Doyle

64 Rosemary McGee and Jessica Greenhalf 22

The scenes shown in the cartoons werecreated by contributors to this special issueof Participatory Learning and Action onyouth and participatory governance inAfrica. At a writeshop held in Nairobi, thecontributors were asked to show howyoung people commonly view governanceprocesses and their scope for engagementin them. The scenes they presented spokeeloquently of the experiences of youngpeople: being treated as a ‘token’ youngperson, condescended to by adults and nottreated with respect; the frustration ofbeing present but not being heard andhaving no real influence on decisions. It isthese patterns of engagement that thecontributors to this issue are working tochange.

This issue is the result of a collaborationbetween Plan UK, the Institute of Develop-ment Studies (IDS) and InternationalInstitute for Environment and Develop-ment (IIED). From 2006–2011 Plan UKcoordinated a DfID-funded youth andgovernance programme supporting proj-ects in 16 countries across Africa, Asia,Latin America and the UK.1 During a learn-

ing event held in early 2010, staff expressedan interest in sharing their experiencesmore widely and learning from the experi-ences of others. They also highlighted anumber of challenges that often preventedthem from generating good project docu-mentation which could be shared forlearning purposes. These included a lack oftime and, for some, limited self-confidencein writing for an external audience.

Prompted by these discussions, in mid-2010 Plan UK proposed to the PLA team atIIED an issue focusing on the rapidly grow-ing field of youth and participatorygovernance. Building on previous collabo-ration, Plan UK also approached theParticipation, Power and Social Changeteam at IDS. The process of developing theissue included a week-long writeshop inNairobi, Kenya, which gave contributorsthe opportunity to develop and share ideasand build writing confidence (see Box 1 andlater in this article for details of how theissue was developed).

This overview article is written by thetwo guest editors/co-facilitators of the writ-ing and publication process. From our

1 The UK Government’s Department for International Development (DfID).

Writeshop participants spent an afternoon presenting their articles to each other. The discussion helped togenerate a better shared understanding of the issues.

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23l Seeing like a young citizen: youth and participatory governance in Africa

particular perspectives as a British IDS-based ‘scholar-activist’ (Rosie) and a BritishPlan UK-based programme officer(Jessica), we have each been engaged forsome time with youth and participatorygovernance work, including previous worktogether. Our NGO programme experience

spurred us to support shared learningamongst practitioners. Our academic train-ing and experience provided us with sometools and outlets through which our prac-titioner peers could analyse critically andshare insights from their own practice.

To set the scene, we begin by introduc-

Box 1: Developing this special issue of PLA

A call for submissions generated 90 abstracts. Eighteen were selected, 13 as full-length articles and five asshorter, ‘tips for trainers’ articles. We took into account:• the quality, originality and transformative potential of the initiative discussed; • the sex, age and origins of the author(s) to ensure a mixture of male and female, younger and older, southernand northern perspectives;• the sectors and issues covered, to capture as far as possible a representative spread of contemporarygovernance and accountability work.

We gave preference to practitioner contributors and to practitioner-scholar collaborative work, andencouraged some shortlisted contributors to co-author their contributions with young participants or otheractors involved in the design, funding or implementation of the initiative. The selected articles describe workcarried out in Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe,Malawi, Kenya, Somalia and Somaliland. They cover transparency, accountability and anti-corruption in servicedelivery; local planning and budgeting; political and social empowerment of youth and especially girls and youngwomen; HIV/AIDS; pastoralism; and the application of participatory video and information and communicationtechnologies (ICTs) to address governance challenges.

The issue’s content was developed in three stages:• Starting in December 2010, each contributor developed an outline and two successive drafts, with supportfrom the guest editors.• All main article contributors, guest editors and IIED PLA co-editor Holly Ashley participated in a week-longwriteshop in Nairobi in March 2011, at which contributors refined their second drafts.• Contributors then finalised their articles in response to feedback from the IIED editorial board. Some details of the writeshop process are included in this overview – see particularly the section ‘Reflectingcritically on our experience’.

An intensive afternoon spent working on articles. From left to right: Sallieu Kamara and behind him, AbdulSwarray (Sierra Leone), Bedo Traore (Mali), translator Sophie Bide (UK) and Rosemary McGee (UK).

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ing the idea of participatory governance –what it is and why it is needed. We thenexplain why we have chosen to focus onyouth and participatory governance in sub-Saharan Africa. After this, we present aframework for thinking about citizenengagement in governance, and commenton this from the particular perspectives ofyoung citizens. At the writeshop, contribu-tors used this framework to explore theinitiatives they were writing about. Fourbroad themes emerged, all familiar ones inparticipatory governance and citizenengagement. However, here we tease outtheir particular implications and dimen-sions for young people’s participation ingovernance. We then reflect briefly on theprocess of producing this publication. Weend not with a conclusion but with anopening into the substance of the specialissue.

What is participatory governance andwhy is it needed? It is increasingly evident today that statesare not built nor run through institutionsalone. Organised citizens play vital roles byarticulating concerns, mobilising pressurefor change and monitoring government

fulfilment and performance of services(Gaventa and McGee, 2010). All over theworld we are seeing experiments in ‘partic-ipatory governance’. People andorganisations are grasping the opportuni-ties provided by decentralisation and otherreform processes and demanding more of asay in public policy and budget processes.

A crucial early stage in the writeshop was getting to know one another and the work that participants areinvolved in.

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Box 2: Formal and social accountabilityapproaches

Formal accountability: formal, establishedinstitutions e.g. electoral systems, statecommissions, ombudsmen’s offices. In many parts ofthe world these institutions are under-resourced,suffer from poorly defined roles and weak mandates,and are not accessible to those groups who needthem most.

Social accountability: ‘Social accountability can bedefined as an approach towards buildingaccountability that relies on civic engagement i.e. inwhich it is ordinary citizens and/or civil societyorganisations who participate directly or indirectly inexacting accountability. Mechanisms of socialaccountability can be initiated and supported by thestate, citizens or both, but very often they aredemand-driven and operate from the bottom-up’(Malena et al., 2004). Examples include participatorybudgeting, monitoring electoral processes usingonline and mobile technology and citizen evaluationof public services.


Citizens have begun to demand andenforce accountability from those in power.As existing, formal institutions of account-ability often fail them, a growing range ofcitizen-led mobilisation, activism anddemands, known as social accountability,is developing (see Box 2). These forms ofcitizen engagement and social accounta-bility are particularly promising for thosewhose voices are not easily heard in formalpolicy and governance processes, includingyoung people.

Why focus on youth in Africa?Exciting as these new social accountabilityapproaches are, we need to look harder atthem. Experience so far suggests that somevoices, including those of young people,often get left out, just as they do fromformal, electoral, political representationprocesses. We need to know more aboutwhy this is and how it can be overcome.

In sub-Saharan Africa, as in other partsof the world, shortcomings in formalaccountability mechanisms have generateda range of social accountability responses(Claasen and Alpin-Lardiés, 2010; McNeiland Malena, 2010). However, there islimited analysis of these innovations,except for the two works just cited. Hardlyany documentation focuses on youngpeople’s perspectives and roles in relationto accountability. Yet, in Africa, as in manysouthern countries, youth constitute morethan half of the population (see Box 3 fordefinitions of ‘youth’).2

Established channels of politicalaccountability are not felt to be an effectiveway to engage, as demonstrated by Afro-barometer’s analysis of young people’smistrust of formal politics (Chikwanha andMasunungure, 2007). Young people inAfrica are more likely to belong to a youthorganisation, school council, neighbour-hood association or social movement thanto a political party or organisation. They

have often found their emerging interest inelectoral and party politics manipulated toserve the interests of (often elder) others.Young people consider African states tohave done little for them and to owe themmuch. Social accountability offers them newopenings. There is much to learn from theways that young people are challengingnorms and structures that exclude them,engaging with the state and demandingaccountability. The articles in this issuecapture some of these experiences.

Understanding citizen engagement ingovernance: a frameworkGovernance can be thought of as theprocesses by which a state exercises powerand the nature of relations between thestate and its citizens (see Box 4 for defini-tions of ‘citizen’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘organisedcitizens’). Visually, we can represent theconnections between the state and organ-ised citizens, as in Figure 1. The figureshows organised citizens interacting withthe state at the local and national levels.These interactions are affected by thesocial, cultural, economic and politicalcontext within which they take place, aswell as by the history of the countryconcerned.

Box 3: Definitions of ‘youth’

Definitions of who is considered a ‘youth’ in Africavary historically and culturally, as well as from onecontext to another and even within contexts(Chigunta, 2006; United Nations, 2003). In Africa,some countries have adopted the United Nation’sdefinition of youth of 15 to 24 years. Others use theCommonwealth definition of 15 to 29 years. Forpolicy purposes, the age range can be even wider. Formany, ‘youth’ is better defined as a period oftransition from dependence (childhood) toindependence (adulthood), the nature and length ofwhich varies from one individual or society toanother (Curtain, 2003). In compiling this specialissue we have broadly adopted this transition model,in recognition of the varied national contextsdiscussed in the articles.

2 The 2007 World Development Report Development and the next generation puts figuresto this ‘youth bulge’: ‘1.5 billion people are aged 12–24 worldwide, 1.3 billion of them indeveloping countries, the most ever in history’ (World Bank, 2007).


Young citizens and their organisations,or those working with them, fall within theorganised citizens’ circle. They are increas-ingly significant as populations becomeyounger. As we have noted, youth is a tran-sitional stage in the life-cycle. As youngpeople move from childhood to adulthood,their places and roles undergo re-definitionand re-negotiation. This has implicationsfor the ways young people’s needs andinterests are represented and pursued. Italso affects the opportunities they have toexercise citizenship and realise their rights.

As advocates and practitioners ofparticipation in governance, we are inter-ested in the interfaces (meeting points)between citizens and government in localand national governance processes. Theseare represented in Figure 1 by the areawhere the organised citizen and govern-ment circles overlap. We are also interestedin what goes on in the organised citizens’circle because activities there often helppeople to move into, or use more effectively,the interfaces they have with government.

The context – historical, political,

Box 4: Citizens, citizenship and organised citizens

How to define ’citizens‘ and ’citizenship’ is the subject of much intellectual and legal debate. We define it herenot in terms of voting rights, birthplace or country of residence, but as people with rights – all those covered inthe Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ensuing treaties and conventions. These universal rights extendfrom global North to South; from local to global; from cradle to grave; from individual and private to collective,public and institutional.3

We prefer the term ’organised citizens’ to the more common ‘civil society’ since the latter, like so manydevelopment terms and concepts, has become such a buzzword that it tends to obscure understandings of thissphere rather than elucidating them (see Chandhoke, 2007).

Figure 1: Understanding governance

Source: adapted from McGee et al. (2003).

ECONOMYSOCIAL

DYNAMICS

POLITY

SOCIO-CULTURAL

CONTEXT

HISTORY

3 See www.drc-citizenship.org for more discussion.

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Local Government


economic, societal, cultural factors and soon (shown outside the circles in Figure 1) –shapes how citizens and government inter-act. For example, if civil conflict hasoccurred and relationships betweengovernment and citizens have brokendown, the governance prospects are notgood. On the other hand, in a situationwhere NGOs and social movements havehelped to oust a military dictator and manyof their members have taken up roles in anew democratically elected government,the prospects might be much better.

Besides ‘external’ context, the interac-tions between organised citizens andgovernment are also shaped by the compo-sition of the different groups interacting,and the relationships between peoplewithin each group (these are the ‘socialdynamics’ referred to in Figure 1).

Promoting young people’s participationin governance – seeing like a youngcitizenThe question that really interests advocatesof participatory governance is: how caninterfaces between citizens and the state befostered and deepened? Three types of

strategies are often suggested: • Increase citizen representation in thegovernment arena – enhancing citizenvoice and influence. • Bring more government representatives,or higher-level representatives, into contactwith citizens, enhancing governmentresponsiveness.• Focus on what actually happens at theinterfaces that are created between citizensand government when they interact, andwork out how to support and facilitateproductive and high-quality engagement.

Recent research offers insights into howwe can understand and exploit the scopefor fostering and deepening the interfaces.It shows the importance of complement-ing our considerable contemporaryknowledge of the state and its workings, by‘seeing like a citizen’ (our emphasis) (Eybenand Ladbury, 2006; DRCCPA, 2011) ortaking an ‘upside-down view of governance’(Centre for the Future State, 2010).

Seeing like a citizen helps shed light onthe obstacles, flaws, disincentives andcomplications that adults must overcomeif they are to engage effectively with gover-nance processes that affect their lives.

A session exploring the nature of relationships between the state and its citizens in governance work – oftenmessy, complicated, unpredictable and in flux. For youth and governance work, what goes on within theseoverlapping spheres – and how can we use these interfaces in a constructive way?

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Contributors to this issue take this one stepfurther. Children and young people, despitetheir demographic weight, are traditionally,culturally, legally and structurally margin-alised from decision-making processes.Seeing like a young citizen is thereforecrucial to our task as advocates of youngpeople’s participation in governance. Thisis what we were aiming to do at the begin-ning of our writeshop in Nairobi when weasked contributors to act out scenes ofyouth engagement in governanceprocesses, and how young people felt aboutthem.

Using the governance frameworkAt the writeshop we used the governanceframework shown in Figure 1 to helpcontributors analyse their work. We laidout the two-circles governance diagram onthe floor using ropes, and invited contrib-utors to position themselves according tothe initiative they were writing about.

Some contributors placed themselves inthe citizens’ circle. They are working toconstruct citizenship among youth andenhance young citizens’ voice and influence

so that they can engage with the state. Forexample, confidence-building activitiescarried out with specific groups of youngcitizens who are marginalised and disem-powered, such as girls in northern Ghana(Akapire et al., this issue).

One contributor, a local governmentofficer, placed himself in the governmentcircle close to the interface. He is workingto increase government responsiveness toyouth concerns and trying to takecolleagues with him. He spoke of the lone-liness of championing youth engagementwithin a government where the necessaryknowledge, skills, attitudes and relation-ships are lacking (see Ochieng andAnyango, this issue).

Many contributors placed themselvesin the overlap between citizens and govern-ment. They are building or adapting thespaces where young people engage withstate actors, thickening and deepeningwhat goes on there. Some are even chal-lenging the power relations that shapethese interactions. They talked about thedevices and processes they are using to getyouth voices better heard in these spaces,

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including changing the nature of the spacesand the behaviour or range of the govern-ment actors in them.

From this exercise and others used formutual learning at the writeshop, and fromthe articles themselves, four broad themesemerged: • From youth presence, voice and visibilityto youth influence and rights• Rejuvenating spaces for engagement• Learning citizenship young• Power to young people

We use these as our four organisingthemes to introduce the issue’s contenthere, and in the issue itself. The themes areinterlinked and not all the 13 main articlesand five ‘tips for trainers’ articles fitperfectly into one or another. We haveplaced each under the heading mostrelated to its focus and key messages.

From youth presence, voice and visibilityto youth influence and rightsEven when approached from the leastpolitical, most technocratic angle, there is astrong argument for involving youngpeople in governance. If policies, plans and

budgets are to be relevant to youth, theyneed to be informed by their realities,priorities and perspectives. However, manyinitiatives designed to involve young peoplehave increased young voices in governancespaces, but not young people’s influenceover decision-making – so their participa-tion may be tokenistic. The article by theyoung people from Louga with Fall, basedon Plan Senegal’s governance work, is arefreshing antidote to this tendency. Therewe read young people’s own perceptions oftheir journey from being ‘little helpers’ tobeing partners in local development plan-ning.

Voices can be carried away by thebreeze, with no one held accountable forwhat has been demanded and promised.Images are different. Video has publicappeal where television ownership is notwidespread and it is also easily accessibleonline, e.g. via YouTube. It can amplify(make louder) and spread the voices ofyoung people, as well as being an account-ability tool. Used to make young people’sconcerns visible and hold local authoritiesto account, it can activate and empower

Writeshop participants during a snowball exercise to discuss the key messages and objectives for this specialissue. Left to right: Fadekemi Akinfaderin-Agarau (Nigeria), Anderson Miamen (Liberia), Lipotso Musi (Lesotho),Linda Raftree (Cameroon), Edward Akapire, (Ghana) and George Cobbinah Yorke (Ghana).

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marginalised youth (Miamen and Jaitner;Akinfaderin-Agarau and Fashola), evento the point where they step into formallocal political roles (Kamara and Swar-ray). Digital and social media are newavenues, but are not by definition channelsof progressive social change. Spreading likewildfire and appealing particularly toyounger generations, they can end up aslittle more than gimmicks, with no impacton development or governance. Like allsocial change tools, they are as transfor-mative as the actors using them and theprocesses in which they are used. Raftreeand Nkie’s account of digital mapping inCameroon provides a healthy corrective to‘silver bullet’ zeal, while also offeringevidence of the transformative potential ofsuch approaches.

Social categories and norms frequentlystifle young people’s voices or prevent themfrom having influence. In Africa, youngpeople are often expected to offer theirelders unquestioning respect and defer-ence. Furthermore, ‘youth’ often means‘male youths’– entrenched gender inequal-ity hinders young female citizens from evengaining access, let alone having influence,in public spaces. Contributors describedifferent approaches to countering nega-tive opinions of youth (Ndebele andBilling; Akapire et al.; Kamara and Swar-ray) and to addressing the poor self-esteemor low expectations of youth in general andgirls and young women in particular.Mabala and Orowe tell how negativestereotypes of Kenyan youth as originatorsof electoral violence were successfully chal-lenged and overturned. One article(Ndebele and Billing) makes the pointthat not only young Zimbabwean womenbut also young Zimbabwean men facebarriers to participation because of theirsex.

However, contributions also show thatage may combine with other characteris-tics typically associated with exclusion,such as disability or gender, to create unex-pected advantages and interesting hybrids.

Nomdo and Henry highlight how publicsector support for disability access in SouthAfrica accidentally trumped longstandingexclusion. Pastoralist communities, typi-cally so little engaged in governanceprocesses, have been afforded some visibil-ity and legitimacy in Somaliland andPuntland through the commitment ofpastoralist youth (Kesa). The stigma anddenial of rights associated with HIV andAIDS in Nigeria have been exposed andtranslated into successful advocacy initia-tives through youth-led university campustours and other initiatives (Akinfaderin-Agarau and Fashola).

For voice to turn into influence, ques-tioning the nature and quality of‘participation’ or ‘engagement’ is key. Onecontributor (Tang) is concerned with howthis is being assessed and by whom. Partic-ipation needs to be conceived of not as anend in itself but as a means to further, moreconcrete ends that constitute sustainable,progressive changes. Some of the articlescite increased youth access to governmentstructures – such as through youth parlia-ments – as a sign of success (Musi andNtlama; Traore; Akapire et al.). Getting afoot in the door of a governance space canundoubtedly be a very significant achieve-ment for young people in some of thecontexts we are working in. But do theseadvances bring influence, or realise rights?Will they reshape governance spaces andgovernment responses to address youngpeople’s concerns? For how long will they besustained? Ochieng and Anyango’s reflec-tions on the Jipange Youth Organisation inNairobi offer room for optimism, althoughthe future is uncertain now that externalsupport is ending. Other activities, too, seemto have sown long-term transformativeseeds. Mvurya Mgala and Shutt criticallyexamine young people’s participation viagrounded power analysis. MaitaMwawashe (pers. comm.) describes self-critical exploration of what makes a youthgroup accountable and transparent to itsown members as well as other stakeholders.


Rejuvenating spaces for engagementThis takes us to a more focused discussionof the spaces in which young people’sengagement in governance happens. Vari-ous typologies of policy or governancespaces are on offer (e.g. Brock et al., 2001;Cornwall, 2004; Gaventa, 2006), focusingon who creates the space and who can enterand act in it – see Box 5 for one example.

Applying such a typology to youngpeople’s participation requires attention towhat or who gave rise to the space, asdescribed in Box 5. But we also need to lookat how the status of adults and young citi-zen actors within it differ, as well asdifferences in status between young citi-zens of different ages. Seeing like a youngcitizen reveals that there are some gover-nance and accountability spaces that youthtend to be ‘naturally’ shut out of. In othersthey have little interest in participating.Then there are youth spaces, where olderpeople are rare visitors, but which lack‘teeth’ or influence. The question is: whatkind of space is most promising for youngpeople’s participation? (see McGee, forth-coming). Should adult spaces be replicated,as with children’s parliaments? Shouldparallel spaces be created, as with schoolcouncils? Or should efforts be focused onmodifying existing spaces and state-citizeninterfaces?

In many contributions to this issue, newstructures or platforms have been estab-lished: in Ghana a Young FemaleParliament (YFP) (Akapire et al.); inLesotho a Shadow Children’s Parliament(SCP) sitting, in Zimbabwe Youth VillageAssemblies (Ndebele and Billing), in Malia Children’s Parliament (Traore), inLiberia local Poverty Watch Councils(Miamen and Jaitner). Meanwhile, theKenya initiative described by Ochieng andAnyango sought to strengthen existinggovernment structures for youth.

If a new youth structure is established,how is it to be linked effectively to the adultstructure? In Ghana, efforts to link the YFPto district authorities have failed so far. In

Mali, Traore poses the dilemma of inde-pendence versus integration and influence.On the relative merits of creating parallelstructures or integrating youth into existingones, the debate clearly rumbles on.

What goes on outside these spaces isalso important. The existence of legal andpolicy frameworks for citizen engagementand young people’s rights, for example, areuseful, but are insufficient on their own, asrecognised and illustrated by Traore, Musiand Ntlama, Akinfaderin-Agarau andFashola and Tang. The social, political,economic, cultural and historical contextof a given country will also shape thestrength of civil society and its relationshipwith the state.

Box 5: Types of governance spaces

Closed spaces: many decision-making spaces areclosed. Elites (be they bureaucrats, experts or electedrepresentatives) make decisions and provideservices to ‘the people’, without the need for broaderconsultation or involvement. Many civil societyefforts focus on opening up such spaces throughgreater public involvement, transparency oraccountability.

Invited spaces: as efforts are made to widenparticipation, to move from closed spaces to more‘open’ ones, new spaces are created which may bereferred to as ‘invited’ spaces, i.e. those into whichpeople (as users, citizens or beneficiaries) are invitedto participate by various kinds of authorities(Cornwall, 2002). Invited spaces may be ongoing, orone-off forms of consultation. Increasingly, with therise of participatory approaches to governance,these spaces are seen at every level, from localgovernment, to national policy and even in globalpolicy forums.

Claimed/created spaces: these are spaces claimedby less powerful actors from power holders. Theyemerge out of sets of common concerns oridentifications and include spaces created by socialmovements and community associations, as well asspaces where people gather to debate, discuss andresist outside of ‘official’ spaces.

Whatever the terminology, what is critical is whocreates the space – those who create it are morelikely to have power within it to make it serve theirinterests and to determine the terms of engagement.

Adapted from Gaventa, J. (2006) ‘Finding the spacesfor change: a power analysis.’ IDS Bulletin 37: 6.


4 See also Gaventa (2006) and www.powercube.net

If context shapes and complicates thespaces for interaction between states andcitizens, it complicates further still theinterfaces where young citizens can engagewith the state. Even where there is nohistory of civil war or youth violence, aprevalent set of assumptions about youthas immature, unproductive and ignorantshapes public decision-making spaces andconstrains youth’s access to them. Wheregovernment officials have direct experienceof working with young people, this oftenseems to alter their views, making themmore open to involving young people indecision-making spaces (Ochieng andAnyango; Musi and Ntlama; Akin-faderin-Agarau and Fashola). This isimportant because young people have lessscope for creating or claiming spaces thanadults. They generally need to be invitedinto these spaces.

The power difference between citizensand state actors is recognised in ‘space’typologies (e.g. Box 5 above) and poweranalysis frameworks, for example thepower cube discussed in Mvurya Mgalaand Shutt, which analyses the levels,spaces and forms of power and their inter-relationships.4 But power differencesbetween young people and adults also needto be considered. Youthfulness – unlike, forexample, gender – will always shift andevolve, from child to adolescent to youngadult, and this adds yet another dimensionto the analysis.

Recent research suggests that to makesocial accountability work better we needto know more about what goes on at state-citizen interfaces and how to foster andfacilitate constructive interaction, to makesocial accountability work better (McGeeand Gaventa, 2010). The same applies tointeractions between young citizens andstate actors – some of them youth them-selves by local definitions. For instance,young service users will have perspectivesand insights on the provision of those serv-

ices. The concept and practice of trans-parency and freedom of informationpresent particular issues when viewedthrough the lens of child-friendliness. Assome contributions here remind us, thesafety and protection of young people mustbe assessed when establishing and facili-tating interfaces between children andtheir elders, and child protection codesfollowed.

We do not attempt an exhaustive explo-ration of the complexities and intricacies ofyouth-state interfaces here. However, theissue does make some contribution toexploring which methods of communica-tion, appraisal, monitoring and researchcan be used by and with youth to supporttheir engagement in governance processes.Similarly, it points to ways of reaching stateactors disinclined to interact with youngpeople. It also illustrates that self-criticalattention to process and a sharp analysis ofpower relations are vital aspects of the ‘citi-zenship learning’ that these spaces canoffer.

Learning citizenship youngThe construction of citizenship is animportant outcome of most experiences ofcitizen engagement, although it is often notthe main intended outcome (Gaventa andBarrett, 2010). Policy and governancespaces are learning spaces. In them youngpeople can acquire a set of expectationsabout their right to participate and theirpower to bring about change by doing so.They can also acquire the skills and experi-ence required to operate effectively in thesespaces, ensuring they are better placed toparticipate as adult citizens in the future.

Many of the experiences documentedhere are cases of ‘learning by doing’. Groupsof young people experiment with ways ofengaging in and influencing decisionmaking, and more formal or adult-domi-nated organisations support them andlearn alongside them. While young people


often need training to engage successfully,they also need to build confidence. Success-ful engagement can embolden them toengage further, as many of the articlesshow. Capacity strengthening must be care-fully structured. For example,Bani-Afudego et al. refer to householdbudgets to explain government budgets.With these inputs, youth are capable ofinfluencing what are often highly technicalprocesses such as local and national budg-eting (Bani-Afudego et al. in Ghana, theyoung people from Louga with Fall inSenegal, Nomdo and Henry in SouthAfrica) and government procurement (theyoung people from Louga with Fall;Ochieng and Anyango).

It is not only young people who need toacquire new knowledge and skills. Manygovernment officials lack the skills neededto engage citizens in governance. They alsoneed to learn specifically how to engageyoung citizens and contribute to construct-ing their citizenship. While this is not aspecific objective of any of the initiativesdiscussed in this issue, it is documented insome of the contributions (Bani-Afudegoet al.; the young people from Louga withFall).

There are ripple effects from youthparticipation in governance and policyprocesses. The changes realised throughtheir engagement might only occur yearsafter, in a totally different institutional orgeographical setting. But, generally,changes in power relations come aboutthrough these kinds of gradual changes inpeople, in their attitudes and behaviours.As children and young people are at such aformative stage in their lives, there is richpotential for their early engagements withgovernance processes to shape and ensurecontinued participation as committed andactive adult citizens in the future.

Power – to young people?‘If voice is about capacity for self-represen-tation and self-expression’, according toJonathan Fox (2007), ‘then power is about

who listens’. Listening implies not onlyhearing but acting on what is heard. Fox’sphrase is all the more poignant if we recallhow often efforts to promote youngpeople’s participation entirely neglect thequestion of power, including failing toensure that anyone is listening. The resultsof this neglect are evoked in the scenariosdescribed at the beginning of this article.

All contributors here agree that socialaccountability is inherently politicalbecause it seeks to redress power imbal-ances. Even making services moreaccessible and their providers moreaccountable means a re-negotiation ofpower relations, which is a political act.However, the political context often posesserious challenges for social accountabilitywork. One Kenyan participant in ourwriteshop, relating this issue to recentyouth participation in electoral violence inhis country, noted soberly, ‘Some things youjust can’t control’. In the politically chargedenvironments in much of Africa today,youth are continually co-opted by the polit-ically powerful. It is a constant struggle toprevent governance work from becomingpoliticised in the party-political sense.

The processes of social activism andcitizen engagement described by ourcontributors seem to suffer from politicalcycles, and particularly elections. Theinitiatives written about by Musi andNtlama in Lesotho and by Akinfaderin-Agarau and Fashola in Nigeria cameunder great time pressure to secure legaland policy changes before impending elec-tions. In other articles too, electionsactually serve as obstacles to democracy, ifdemocracy is understood as democraticpractices of citizenship at the local, every-day level. This includes actions by youngpeople, only some of whom are votersanyway.

Elections in Africa often seem to causeviolence and distract attention from realpolitical struggles, yet rarely deependemocracy, enhance development orstrengthen citizenship. We hope that this


negative impression might be partlyexplained by our interest in contributionsabout social accountability initiatives,rather than initiatives that introducedyoung people to electoral politics. The latterwould surely have revealed some morepositive reflections on the learning ofresponsible political citizenship amongyouth in Africa.

As already touched on above, particu-lar power issues shape young people’sability to participate in society, politics andgovernance. Some articles (Ndebele andBilling; Mvurya Mgala and Shutt)describe approaches which help unpack‘power’. This analysis helps to re-shape andre-orient initiatives that otherwise may notchallenge existing power relations.

Power dynamics operate betweenyoung citizens as well as between them andstate actors. Youth groups and movementsare not necessarily egalitarian or demo-cratic, nor will democratic representationflow of its own accord. Socio-economicdifferences works against internal democ-

racy and equitable representation: thepoorest are harder to reach and rarelyengaged in initiatives such as these. Socialaccountability initiatives might make infor-mation accessible or routes to serviceimprovement visible. Yet for these to betransformative, demand – effectivedemand, not just demand in principle – hasto exist and be exercised. That requires thetime of the time-poor.

Also, power corrupts. Once elected,youth leaders can forget theirconstituency. What checks and balancescan be put in place? How to ensure localto national representative structures?Some of the contributions grapple directlywith these questions, either in theirsubstance (Tang; Traore) or in the partic-ipatory way they have been written (theyoung people from Louga with Fall).Other authors recognise a failure fully toaddress or overcome power issues in theprocesses they are documenting (Raftreeand Nkie; Musi and Ntlama; Ndebeleand Billing).

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Cynthia Ochola Anyango and Charlotte Bani-Afudego giving peer review feedback on each other’s articles. Tous, this image captures an important element of the writeshop: here, two young women are working togetherto provide horizontal, non-threatening and respectful feedback on each other’s work.


Reflecting critically on our experienceAs co-editors, we were struck by the diffi-culty of supporting contributors to reflectcritically on the experiences they were writ-ing about. Since PLA gives high priority tocritical reflection, we all worked hard onthis. The writeshop programme includedexercises such as structured reflections onhow we react to criticism and what kind offeedback, delivered in what way, we findmost helpful. It also included one-to-onein-depth peer review of each others’ arti-cles after several days together. We tried tocreate ‘safe spaces’ for pairs of participantsworking together, matching them carefullyin terms of their backgrounds, firstlanguages, nationalities, thematic focus oftheir contributions and other factors. Somecontributors’ final evaluations of thewriteshop highlighted a new appreciationof critical reflection on practice as thesingle most important achievement.

We were also spurred to reflect self-crit-ically on our own facilitation and practiceat various points. For instance, ironically

given the topic of this issue, we did not eventhink about age when matching the peerreview pairs. It was impressed upon usafter the exercise that this meant some ofthe younger participants had to provide in-depth critique to their elders, violatingcultural norms. Likewise, we were broughtup short by the youngest participant whenshe admitted at the end of the writeshopthat at one point she would have liked tovoice her views, but had not felt able to doso. The challenge of developing and prac-tising self-critical awareness is clearlycontinuous.

Participants Edwine Ochieng and Jennifer Tangdiscussing dissemination routes and audiences. Ourkey audiences include practitioners working withyouth, youth groups and communities and dutybearers such as governments and community leaders,as well as donors, international NGOs, researchersand policy makers.

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Is the author’s voice always louder than the voices ofthe people s/he is writing about? Are we beingrepresentative and inclusive when we documentissues affecting youth, whose voices are more oftenmarginalised? The results show how complex theseissues are and developed our shared critical thinking.


The other major challenge we faced asco-editors and contributors was how toadequately and faithfully reflect and repre-sent youth perspectives. Having deliberatelyensured in advance that the writeshopgroup included some youth, we weresurprised to find once there that over halfthose present were ‘youth’, when definedaccording to the loose category of under-30years old. But these ‘youthful’ contributors,because of their social and organisationalpositions, had experiences of seeing andengaging like young citizens which weresubstantially more positive than those ofmost young people written about in theirarticles. So the challenge remained.

A range of approaches were adopted bycontributors to developing and writing theirarticles in order to capture and reflect theperspectives of the young people about

whom they were writing (Box 6). Enablingparticipation and co-generation in theproduction of knowledge and the analysis ofexperience is time- and resource-intensive,much more so than non-participatory exer-cises or papers produced by solitaryacademics or practitioners. Yet they areessential to our claim to represent youth andparticipatory governance initiatives. Howworthwhile these painstaking efforts havebeen can only be judged later, on the basis ofhow widely this issue is disseminated, read,and its contents taken up and used.

Concluding the introduction, openingthe issueParticipating in governance and policyprocesses is re-shaping the way youngpeople perceive and exercise citizenship inpowerful ways. This includes how youth

Box 6: Capturing and reflecting the perspectives of young people

Serigne Malick Fall, SenegalFirst of all, we visited the field to tell the young people about the writing project and to identify withthem the exact experience to be reported on. Once this was done, I wrote the abstract that wassubmitted to the editors through the ‘call for submissions’. When our ‘paper’ was accepted, we wentback to see the young people and agreed with them on how the article would be produced.

Afterwards, I was able to set out 11 questions which would help the young people to write – this wasthe plan which was then sent to the editors. We held two writing workshops, one in each community, andfilmed them. During these workshops, young people each chose the question that they wanted torespond to; worked individually to reply to their chosen question; worked in small groups, depending onthe question; and reproduced, in plenary, their group work. Their writing was then aggregated into twodocuments by ‘youth champions’ acting on their behalf.

Using these two documents as a base, I produced the first draft which was sent to the editors. Thefirst draft was also sent to the young people, and I will gather their reactions soon after the writeshop.

Leila Billing and Talita Ndebele, ZimbabweParts of the article draw on the baseline and annual review, both mentioned in the article, which wereboth participatory processes. Before starting writing, we held a consultation with the youth groups,telling them about the topic of the article and asking what they wanted included. The young peopleselected some images that they wanted us to use and we made the final selection from their shortlist. Weproduced a first draft and had it translated into Ndebele.5 We took it to the community youth group andheld a focus group discussion about it at which they gave their reactions. Now that we’ve finished analmost-final draft, we’ll have it translated again and take it to them for their sign-off.

Fadekemi Akinfaderin-Agarau and Temitope Fashola, NigeriaThe writers of this article are both young people. We base this on the Nigeria national youth policy andthe Africa youth charter which states that young people are people between ages 18 and 35. In addition,the Youth Advocacy Group (YAG) members also contributed to the article by reviewing the second draftprior to submission. They also provided feedback based on the comments made by the editors for thethird drafts. They suggested all the quotes used in the article.

5 Ndebele is a Nguni language of southern Africa spoken in Zimbabwe.


relate to other youth, and to government.In the ActionAid Zimbabwe initiative,youth from different political parties arerecognising common interests (Ndebeleand Billing). In the Senegal case childrenare beginning to ‘feel like citizens’ (theyoung people from Louga with Fall).Jipange youth in Kenya are increasinglyviewing government not as an oppressorbut a partner (Ochieng and Anyango). InNigeria, youth have made links with theirsenators and demanded that they supportthe HIV/AIDS anti-stigma bill. Throughthis, they are beginning to recognise theirpower as citizens (Akinfaderin-Agarauand Fashola). The way young people relateto – and are related to – by ‘their’ interna-tional and local NGOs is also changing, asyoung people become participants andstakeholders in development processesrather than just beneficiaries.

A sad aspect of the writeshop was tohear repeatedly from practitioners acrossAfrica how youth (implicitly, male youth)are seen as, and see themselves as, a ‘lostgeneration’. They appear disaffected andbored, corruptible and corrupted, oftendrawn unwillingly into the power strugglesof their elders. While youth are certainly ill-served by tokenism, these forms ofco-option are infinitely worse. They addurgency to efforts across the continent toexplore and support young people’s politi-cal and social agency. Lack of gainfulemployment, particularly in contexts ofpost-conflict economic and social unrest, isseen by many to underpin youth disaffec-tion and marginalisation. While we arecommitted to presenting a different

perspective on young people in Africa thanthis pessimistic ‘lost generation’ discourse,we are also anxious to avoid editing outunsavoury realities.

The upside, revealed strongly in thiscollection of articles, is the vibrancy, energy,persistence, passion and enthusiasm ofyouth. This can drive change in creativeand unexpected ways. It is particularlyvaluable in governance work, where thecontext is often rapidly evolving. Opportu-nities can open up and/or close withoutwarning; alert young people can be well-positioned to respond quickly andinnovatively. This energy and passion canof course also be used for less constructivemeans. At the time of writing, events in theMiddle East are leaving no doubt that thegerontocracies and autocracies of theregion have for decades – even generations– been ignoring and silencing youth at theirperil.6 7

A leading text on citizenship aims todeal with ‘the different mechanics of exclu-sion which consign certain groups withina society to the status of lesser citizens orof non-citizens, and on the struggles bysuch groups to redefine, extend and trans-form “given” ideas about rights, duties andcitizenship’ (Kabeer, 2005). We hope thisissue will fulfil a similar purpose, focusingon young citizens in Africa and their strug-gles. We hope also that participatorypractitioners – both young and old – canlearn from the experiences shared here,and that this helps them in their ownefforts to ensure young people’s voices areheard and are influential in governanceand policy processes across the world.

6 Gerontocracies are governments by old people.7 An autocracy is government by one person holding all the power.


CONTACT DETAILSRosemary McGeeParticipation, Power and Social ChangeTeamInstitute of Development StudiesFalmer, BN12 9REUKEmail: [email protected]: www.ids.ac.uk;http://participationpower.wordpress.com/about-us/

Jessica GreenhalfCountry Director Restless Development Uganda Plot 6 Acacia RoadPO Box 1208JinjaUganda Email: [email protected] Website: www.restlessdevelopment.org/uganda

NOTESThanks to John Gaventa, Director of the Citizenship DevelopmentResearch Centre, IDS, UK from 2000–2010, for allowing us toborrow and adapt the phrase ‘seeing like a young citizen’ from theDRC’s lexicon. We also thank John for his comments on a first draftof this article.

During the design, planning and implementation of the PLAwriteshop Jessica was a member of Plan UK’s governance teamoverseeing Plan UK’s DfID-funded youth and governanceprogramme. The programme supported participatory governanceinitiatives involving youth in 16 countries around the world. Jessicahas since moved to Jinja, Uganda to work with Restless DevelopmentUganda, a youth-led development NGO focusing on civicparticipation, livelihoods, and sexual and reproductive health.

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Chandhoke, N. (2007) ‘Civil society.’ Development in Practice 17:4/5. Chigunta, F. (2006) ‘The creation of job/work opportunities and

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