In January 2019, Chatham House, in partnership with the Robert Bosch Stiftung, canvassed the opinions of young people from across Africa and Europe as part of the Common Futures Conversations project.
The consultation gathered the respondents’ views on which political issues mattered to them, as well as data on their social media preferences and political engagement. This briefing provides an overview of what was found.
This unique consultation was largely conducted in the 13 countries involved in the pilot stage of the project. These countries were selected to provide a diverse geographical, linguistic and cultural spread across both continents:
The consultation was conducted from 21 January 2019 to 17 February 2019 largely via an online survey platform embedded in the Chatham House website. In addition, in Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia and Tunisia a substantial number of responses were collected in person, using the same questions and multiple-choice answers. Common Futures Conversations Representatives in each country led the local dissemination efforts using a large variety of outreach methods including connecting to existing networks, organizing local events, working with local media, and social media marketing campaigns. The Representatives were also encouraged to share their successful outreach methods with their peers to improve the overall reach of the consultation. The combination of Chatham House and local outreach initiatives is what dictated the sample, which is thus not wholly representative of the 13 countries.
Consultation questions were designed in English by researchers at Chatham House with input from the Common Futures Conversations Representatives. The consultation was split into three sections. First, respondents were asked some basic demographic questions. Second, respondents were shown a list of political issues and asked to prioritize them through a number of different scenarios. Third, respondents were asked about their social media preferences and political engagement.
To aid accessibility, the consultation was translated into nine additional languages:
In total, the consultation engaged with 4,208 people from 89 countries. Initially a number of responses were removed due to explicit content, incomprehensible answers and if respondents did not follow the structure of the questions enough to draw meaning from the answers. The project team refined the dataset to include only responses from adults aged 18–35 who were either born or reside in one of 13 countries across Africa and Europe involved in the pilot stage of the project. This was done to ensure that only the countries of which there was a reasonable sample were included. Due to the relevant data protection laws, we have not been able to engage anyone under the age of 18. The total dataset from the 13 countries comprised of 3,487 responses on which the following statistical analyses were performed, either based on the total dataset, hereafter referred to as ‘CFC13’, or based on the total dataset split by continent, hereafter referred to as ‘CFC13, Africa–Europe Comparison’. The geographical spread of responses is uneven and range from 94 responses to 765 responses per country, with 2,286 responses coming from Africa and 1,251 responses coming from Europe.
In the dataset, each response includes both a country of residence and country of birth. A response is counted towards a certain country/continent if the respondent was born and/or resides in that country/continent. If a respondent was born in one of the 13 countries and resides in another of the 13 countries, their response will be taken into account for both countries as well as, when applicable, for both continents.
What follows is an overview of the responses to each question. In most cases the graphs present the overall spectrum of responses, alongside responses by continent. The continental comparison is shown due to the uneven split between responses from Africa and Europe. Data on responses from specific countries can be provided upon request by contacting the authors of this Survey Briefing.
