A Generation in Flux: Youth, Migration and the New Political Contract

In the early 1960s, Africa’s newly independent states promised their young citizens a future of dignity, work, and belonging. Youth were the face of liberation and the engine of reconstruction. They were ministers at 30, activists at 20, and civil servants by default. Six decades on, that social contract lies in tatters. 

Across the continent, the median age is under 20, yet leadership remains dominated by men four times that age, and most young people find themselves locked out of jobs, decision-making, and even hope. By 2030, over 40% of the world’s youth will live in Africa, but more than half say they would leave their country if given the chance. Migration has become a form of silent protest, a vote of no confidence in governance systems that no longer inspire faith or deliver opportunity.

Migration in Africa is often framed as a humanitarian concern or a demographic inevitability. It is both, but it is also political feedback. When young people pack their bags for Manchester, Dubai, or Toronto, they are not merely chasing higher incomes. They are voting with their feet against stagnation. Surveys by Afrobarometer consistently show that trust in political institutions is weakest among the youth. In Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia, frustration is no longer confined to protest squares; it moves in waves out of the continent.

This quiet exodus reshapes political calculus. Remittances now outstrip foreign aid in many countries, becoming a safety valve for poor governance. Families survive on diaspora earnings, and governments avoid reform by outsourcing livelihoods. The result is a perverse equilibrium: political elites tolerate economic drift, buffered by migration-fuelled inflows; youth disengage from domestic politics, insulated by hope abroad.

What emerges is not just brain drain, but legitimacy drain. In countries where elections are ritualistic and public services deteriorate, the dream of making change at home feels like a cruel myth. Migration is not the crisis; it is the indicator.

The Illusion of Inclusion

African governments do not ignore young people. They invoke them endlessly. Policy documents cite “youth empowerment.” National development plans are peppered with buzzwords like “inclusion” and “participation.” Ministries organise youth summits, designate ambassadors, and set up token consultative bodies. But these gestures rarely translate into power.

The average age of cabinet ministers in Africa is over 60. Only a handful of countries have youth representatives with real influence in parliaments or political parties. The barriers are structural: gerontocratic politics, patronage-based systems, and opaque electoral processes that favour incumbents and marginalise new entrants. Even where quotas exist, as in Uganda or Kenya, they often serve as buffers, mechanisms to contain youth activism, not vehicles to amplify it.

The result is a widening credibility gap. Young Africans are highly engaged on social media, in protest movements, and through informal economies, but see little reason to invest in formal politics. Voter turnout among youth has declined across several electoral cycles, most notably in South Africa and Nigeria. The problem is not apathy. It is calculation.

What Youth Really Want

The question is not how to “include” young people. It is how to build systems they see as worth entering. Across the continent, youth-led movements, from Senegal’s Y’en a marre to Sudan’s resistance committees, are already redefining what accountability looks like. They are not asking to be managed. They are demanding to be heard, counted, and trusted with responsibility.

A new political contract begins with credibility. That means opening candidacies to younger entrants, reforming party financing to level the playing field, and creating civic education systems that treat youth as stakeholders, not spectators. It means removing the barriers, legal, economic, and psychological, that tell a 25-year-old she must wait two more decades before her voice matters.

It also means seeing migration not as betrayal, but as feedback. Policies that retain talent must address the root causes of departure: unemployment, corruption, and institutional decay. Investment in education, innovation ecosystems, and cross-border mobility within Africa can offer alternatives to departure without compulsion.

At the African Union’s end-of-year Youth Forum, declarations will likely flow. But unless they lead to structural change, they will only reinforce the disillusionment they seek to remedy. Africa’s youth are not just a demographic dividend. They are a political constituency. The future will not wait for them. They are already moving, with or without a seat at the table.

Israel Olaniyan is a Regional Fellow of the Africa Program at the Sixteenth Council