The Economic Struggles of African Youths Spark Widespread Protests

Afrobarometer, a pan-African survey organization, polled 18 to 35-year-olds and found that unemployment was the most pressing issue.

In Kenya, young African demonstrators were successful in getting a law that would have increased taxes on everything from sanitary napkins to vegetable oil and bread withdrawn. Ugandans protested corruption, motivated by their Nigerian neighbours. Nigerians staged protests against the country’s “bad governance” and rising living expenses.

People have also taken to the streets in Ghana, Angola, Malawi, and Senegal, among other African nations, following the Covid pandemic.

Though the motivations behind each demonstration have been different, they all stem from growing youth populations confronting rising prices, a dearth of well-paying jobs, and mistrust of the political establishment.

“Here in Kenya, if you look at these protests, actually, they were led by educated people. But most of them [were] jobless,” said Oxfam inequality researcher Anthony Kamande.

According to the UN, 70% of Africans are under 30 years old. This indicates that the continent is young. In 30 years, its population is predicted to nearly double to 2.2 billion.

Africans in Generation Z and millennials have greater levels of education than previous generations. Only three of the 22 nations that UNESCO received data from 2011 to 2021 had a declining percentage of students pursuing higher education. In sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, over 10 million individuals are joining the labour force annually, competing for only 3 million jobs, according to the World Bank.

Many people who are unemployed work in the dangerous and low-paying informal economy. Afrobarometer, a pan-African survey organization, polled 18 to 35-year-olds and found that unemployment was the most pressing issue.

In addition, several nations have experienced difficulties related to the cost of living as a result of recent economic shocks like Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which drove up the price of food, fuel, and fertilizer, and the US central bank’s interest rate hikes, which increased borrowing costs internationally.

Approximately one-third of sub-Saharan African nations had double-digit inflation earlier in the year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Following the elimination of an expensive gasoline subsidy and an inept sequence of currency devaluations, it is currently running above 34% in Nigeria.

Protests did not break out right away after Bola Tinubu took office as president in May 2024 and implemented these policy reforms. According to Razia Khan, head economist of Standard Chartered Bank for the Middle East and Africa, “Prior to the presidential election in 2023, each of the three candidates said FX [foreign exchange] liberalisation needs to happen and the fuel subsidy is unaffordable and needs to go.”

“It’s a year after the initial fuel subsidy removal that we’re seeing protests and that’s really driven by the fact that the cost of living crisis has not eased meaningfully and that inflation continues to be at runaway levels,” she continued.

On the other hand, tax increases were never widely embraced in Kenya. Protesters feel that those in government, and parliamentarians in some cases, should also bear the pain by cutting spending.

The researcher with Oxfam, Kamande, also pointed the finger at growing inequality and the debt crisis, which has forced financially challenged governments to attempt and increase taxes on common citizens.

Public expenditures have been sucked down by massive debt loads. Kenya uses a third of its tax income to pay down its debt. The government of Ghana used half of its revenue in 2022 to pay off debt before it went into default after the year.

To avoid the skyrocketing inflation Nigeria has seen since weakening its currency, Ethiopia is also restructuring its debt. Last week, the nation in East Africa allowed its birr currency to depreciate by 30% versus the US dollar. Subsequently, the IMF approved a four-year loan of $3.4 billion. Ethiopia is also anticipated to receive $16.6 billion from the World Bank for the following three years.

Although an unnaturally high exchange rate isn’t always sustainable, devaluations can have negative effects, according to Daouda Sembene, CEO of the Dakar, Senegal-based consulting firm Africatalyst.

Former IMF executive director Sembene stated, “Attention also needs to be put … to make sure that those who are likely to suffer from it are protected.” Charlie Robertson, head of macro-strategy at FIM Partners, which oversees investments in emerging market nations, stated that “political protest is all that educated youths have,” indicating that many of the forces driving the latest protests were not going away.