“Good Life Never Comes Like Dreams”
Youth and the city in Tanzania
Nicola Banks
ESRC Future Research Leader (ES/K009729/1)
50 Years of Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: The experience of Tanzania, University of Bradford 29th to 30th May 2014
1. Overview
• Why young people?
• Why urban youth?
• Conceptualisations of ‘youth’
• An alternative framework for conceptualising youth
• Youth and the city in Tanzania: methods and overview
– Assets: employment and education
– Institutional support
– Hopes and aspirations
– Developmental outcomes
• Conclusions
2. Why youth?
• Young people constitute significant proportions of national populations (‘the youth bulge’)
– Uganda – 33% - Kenya – 32%
– Burundi – 32% - Rwanda – 31%
– Tanzania – 32%
• Suffer disproportionately from development challenges:
– Tanzanian youth constitute 60-65% of unemployed people and the youth unemployment rate is 4% higher than national average.
– Young women (15-24) account for 45% new HIV infections, young men account for a further 26%.
• Youth populations hold the responsibility for being the ‘next generation’, at the same time as being seen as a significant threat to the country and population.
2. Why urban youth?
• Pressures of youth demography accompanied by rapid urbanisation.
• Dynamic ‘global’ cities heighten youth aspirations but contemporary urbanisation across the continent has not lived up to these promises.
• Cities are difficult places to be young and poor:
– Urbanisation has been accompanied by poverty and informality
– Over 80% Dar’s population live in informal settlements
– Unemployment rates significantly higher in cities, especially capital cities (National unemployment 11%, urban unemployment 16.3%, Dar es Salaam unemployment 31.3%)
– Benefits of city life enjoyed by only a select few, widespread marginalisation and disenfranchisement for the majority of young people.
– Limited opportunities for social mobility for the urban poor.
3. Conceptualisations of ‘youth’
• ‘Youth’ defined in two key ways:
1) By age boundary – 15-24 years (UN), increasing up to 35 years across SSA.
- fails to recognise the heterogeneity of young people’s
experiences and needs
2) As a period of 5 ‘key transitions’: learning, work, health, family and citizenship (2007 WDR)
- fails to recognise tight inter-linkages between these
and the fact that youth experience many of them simultaneously.
- Health is not a transition!
- Need to look at the underlying factors providing constraints or opportunities within each transition, including assets, institutional support, aspirations.
3. Harnessing Youth Potential Framework
4. Methods
• Early findings from a 3-year research ESRC-funded project entitled, Youth, poverty and inequality in urban Tanzania.
– Focus group discussions with young men and women in Arusha and Dar es Salaam
– Interviews with parents and local leaders (Arusha)
• Complemented with findings from Uganda
– Nationally-representative survey of youth
– Focus group discussions
5. The urban advantage: education and employment?
• Better access to education, especially secondary and higher
– Gender differentials appear to be narrowing
• But problems of quality remain, leaving young people poorly prepared for hostile job market
• Amidst limited jobs, high competition, and limited skills and capital, young people have to rely on ‘street smartness’
• Left to work under exploitative terms for other people, barely covering their costs and unable to save.
“Even those who are working are in hardship. It’s a struggle for them. They can manage, but not move forward”.
6. Youth and institutional support
• Lack of financial and emotional support from parents:
– Expected to be financially independent from school drop out
– Conflicts between parents and with stepparents
– Limited love and affection
– Unstable family backgrounds (single parents, alcoholism
• Limited support from the broader community:
– Not allowed to participate in decision-making
– Viewed on spectrum from lazy to criminal
– No routes for escaping the pressures of daily life.
6. Youth and institutional support: Government policy
• Policy outlines some of the key challenges facing youth but is unspecific on the measures that need to be taken to improve things.
• Falls behind its neighbours on creation of a National Youth Council, so no political infrastructure that integrates young people into decision-making.
7. Hopes and aspirations
• ‘Good life never comes like dreams’ – benefits and realities of city life
Benefits of the city Realities of the city
“More schools” Early drop out; “Saint Kayumba” schools
“Jobs” (esp small business) No jobs, leads to temptations
“Better transport” Not allowed on local buses (cheaper fare); dangerous
Availability of goods and services
Too expensive
Global integration Makes us see what we’re missing
Tourism This isn’t the Arusha/Dar that we enjoy
9. Some tentative conclusions
• Heightened aspirations are not met in the city:
• “Young people are facing a hard time 100% of the time…there is a huge difference between the situation facing young people today and that facing our own generation when we were youth”
• Idea of transition misrepresents experiences of most youth
• Limited prospects for social mobility, fears of marriage among young men.
“Good Life never comes like dreams”
“Tomorrow is today”