A Generational Clash? Youth Demography and Political Instability in West Africa and Sahel

CID’s Speaker Series featuring Bintu Zahara Sakor, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard and Doctoral Researcher with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
The presentation explores the numerous complex challenges African youth are confronted with today that prevent them from realizing their full potential. High youth unemployment, poor education systems, poverty, and insecurity combined with rapid demographic growth are prompting increased migration for youth. The struggle for self-fulfillment creates additional frustrations among the youth, driving them towards radicalization and contributing to political instabilities such as terrorism, military coups d’états and armed conflict as we are seeing in the West African Sahel region. The talk looks closer at the challenges for African youth, particularly in the context of West Africa and the Sahel region.