Youth Bulge and West Africa: Understanding Dispute Triggers and Conflict Prevention

Abstract

Augustine Ikelegbe speaks to the mismanagement and marginalization of youths as avoidable waste of critical human resources, with myriad consequences for security in transitional societies. The lack of employment even for educated school graduates has been the defining cause of internal social conflicts, aggravated by limited access to quality elementary education. The poor suffer shortage of housing and abysmally bad or absence of health care. More so, most dislocated young people in conflict-prone places regularly are forced into entrepreneurships of crime and violence by warmongers, arms dealers, and drug-traffickers. And many more are recruited as thugs by unscrupulous politicians to rig elections and thus help undermine the prospects of democratization. Unsurprising, youths have tended to see the state and its institutions as illegitimate structures to be confronted even with extralegal means of violent protest. Anchored in the concept of youth bulge, Ikelegbe dismisses the notion of the youth as “inherently rebellious”; and he recommends humane policies to stem deteriorations in mass living standards. The responsible government is required to mitigate conflict by creating economic and political environments favorable to tap and optimize substantive positive energies, which youths possess in abundance and frequently are willing to give away to their governments in order to advance human development and society at large.