How Do Young People Engage with Politics?

The Common Futures Conversations survey asked 3,487 young people from 13 countries across Africa and Europe to consider a list of political issues, and then prioritize them, including which issue most affects their own country and which most affects the world. When comparing global with national concerns, the survey data shows their answers were significantly different.

When answering from the perspective of their own country the rankings looked like this. (Fig. 1)

However, when asked to select the issues most affecting the world, climate change became by far the most commonly chosen. (Fig. 3)

We asked four of the young people involved in helping develop the survey for their views on why there was such a difference between the global and national priorities of respondents particularly in the case of climate change. Read the responses below which have been edited for clarity.

Oyindamola Adegboye — Nigeria

In Nigeria, climate change is not considered a priority because there are other short-term issues that are more pressing to people. Climate change is seen as a long-term issue that can, and should only be solved, when more pressing concerns are addressed.

It’s only normal to expect that people will not focus on climate change when they’re trying to figure out how they will be able to eat the next day. For Nigerians, human capital development and unemployment are much more visible, and therefore important, issues in their everyday life. Until these needs are satisfied, climate change is at the back of people’s minds.

In Nigeria, there is also a perception that Europeans were the ones that brought this problem about in the first place with industrialization. Many African countries are still developing and now, suddenly, Europeans are pushing for countries to significantly reduce their usage of fossil fuels.

Fuel alternatives, like solar power, are considered a luxury and only something that rich countries and individuals can afford to buy into. In Nigeria, we don’t even have a reliable power supply. Many people use generators to supply power in their shops, companies and homes. Therefore, demanding such a switch is incomprehensible and unfair to many people.

Charlotte Carnehl — Germany

Climate change has been at the top of the political agenda in Germany and Europe in the past year. This was evident in the recent EU elections, where candidates focused a lot on sustainability, climate change and critical consumerism.

Alongside the political focus on climate change, there has been an increase in media awareness around the issue, and therefore public awareness. The increase in public awareness is visible across all sectors of society in Germany but especially among young people who have become champions of the issue.

For example, the ‘Fridays for the Future’ movement, inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, has been adopted by students in various schools across the country. Therefore, I was not surprised that climate change was chosen as the most important issue facing the world in 2019 because the survey respondents fell into this ‘younger’ demographic who are already focused on climate change issues.

Young people are also the demographic that are engaging with the media on this issue, sharing information on social media and starting viral campaigns like the ‘Fridays for the Future’ movement.

Ida Laustsen — Norway

I think in Norway, climate change is thought of as the most important issue facing both the country and world in 2019 because its effects are so visible to Norwegians. The impact on our seasons in Norway have been quite profound. In recent years summer has become much hotter and in winter the amount of snowfall has decreased substantially.

That said, I can understand why climate change could be an elitist issue. When looking at the survey results, I think it’s important to remember most of the Norwegian respondents live in Oslo, have pursued higher education and have stable incomes. I think if we were able to reach more Norwegians in suburban areas or from different socio-economic backgrounds, they would have a different perspective and prioritize other issues over climate change.

Climate change would be considered something that the cultural elite in the capital are discussing and an issue that doesn’t concern everybody else who would rather discuss issues they face in their daily life like taxes or pensions.

Mondher Tounsi — Tunisia

I spoke with some of the Tunisian respondents to understand why climate change was selected by the majority of the survey’s respondents as the most important issue facing the country in 2019 because I found the results surprising.

Interestingly, most people said that they chose climate change as the most important issue, not because the issue is of paramount concern, but because it offered the best rationale for global coordinated action as it affects all countries.

Climate change was thought of as a transnational issue, not a domestic issue, which could be a reason why support for climate changed polled so differently in these two questions. This was interesting to hear because in my experience a lot of people in Tunisia view climate change as an elitist problem.

We live in a country experiencing rapid political development, so people tend to focus on short-term or more immediate problems in their daily lives, like poverty, unemployment or corruption. Issues such as climate change are regarded as more long-term concerns to regular citizens who are in dire need of economic development and social welfare.

This post is part of a series reflecting on the results of the Common Futures Conversations (CFC) Youth Survey conducted in January 2019. We asked young people from 13 countries across Africa and Europe a range of questions about the level of their political engagement. When asked to indicate how much attention they paid to politics, these were the results. (Fig. 13)

However, when asked if they felt politicians in their country listened to them, they indicated that they felt overlooked. (Fig. 16)

We asked four of the young people involved in helping develop the survey for their views on why young people, who are engaged in politics, feel ignored by their politicians. Read the responses below which have been edited for clarity.

Martha Chilongoshi — Zambia

I think the problem is that although youth are increasingly engaging in politics, the spaces where they can express their political views in a meaningful way and demand action from politicians don’t exist. So young people are not heard, because we continue to only be able to speak from outside the structures of power.
The few among us who have successfully ran for a political position are often swallowed up by a ‘system’ of patronage and self-service. It’s no longer enough to ‘just be heard’ by politicians: young people need to actively create alternative spaces for driving our own agenda.

Social media has already helped boost engagement, but in the next decade or so, young people are going to have to do more to really have an impact. To solve this, young people need to become our own critical mass and educate ourselves about our current political systems and structures. We will also need to focus a lot of our energy on the civic education processes to increase meaningful participation. This would require that we no longer see ourselves as passive recipients of decisions and goodwill from elderly politicians but more as organizers and drivers of political spaces and ultimately function as organs of the state. I think we have a great opportunity to initiate that kind of dialogue on the CFC platform once it’s in effect.

Helena Craig — UK

In the UK, a major issue is the lack of age representation in parliaments. Most parliamentary roles are held by individuals over the age of 35. Few, if any, young adults aged 18–34 are represented physically in the national parliament. The lack of proportional representation has prevented young people from identifying with their representative, and as a result are more disengaged with politics. This has led to an unfortunate apathy affecting the youth who feel disengaged with the political processes but are perhaps ‘political’ in other ways such as by voicing views online, in an arguably more ‘comfortable’ environment, or by joining debating clubs.

There is also a detrimental lack of political education in primary and secondary schools throughout the UK. This has no doubt caused apathy among youth. Unfortunately, there is also limited capacity for young people to communicate their concerns with their representatives in a productive way. The problem facing young people is not necessarily disengagement with politics but rather a lack of engagement with the current political system and an absence of representation.

Eden Habte — Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, amidst a strong political, social and institutional crisis, it has become commonplace to observe strong political involvement among young people. In Ethiopia, young people have been demanding economic reconstruction, better functioning institutions and more progressive sustainable development policies. But, unfortunately, none of these demands have been addressed by the government. This is because the government is refusing to take responsibility for the current state of affairs in the country and is shifting the blame onto the previous administration’s pitfalls. As a result, politicians have not prioritized the issues that are important to young people, and young people believe their demands are not priorities to the current government. Young people do not believe their voices are being heard and have lost faith in the political process.

Ouatatchin Kone — Côte D’Ivoire

Despite what older generations say, I believe young people are very active in politics today. The survey results are indicative of this. Young people want to have their voices heard and play a key role in national and international decision-making. However, to facilitate more youth involvement, political systems must be transformed both in terms of structure and how they engage with young people. In the case of my country, Cote D’Ivoire, there is no promotion of youth engagement in our traditional political structures. There is also no youth representation in government. In parliament, only 8.8 per cent of elected officials are under 40 years old. As a result, while young people are engaged in advocacy work and bringing innovative policy solutions to politicians, their suggestions are rarely implemented or taken on board because the avenues for their involvement do not exist. I think this is a big reason why the youth feel disappointed and frustrated.

I also think that in many countries, young people feel that they are only used during election campaigns for their votes and in demonstrations as human shields by politicians. Once elected, many politicians do not keep the promises they made and pursue a more self-serving agenda. So, the distrust that youth have for politicians is understandable.

This post is part of a series reflecting on the results of the Common Futures Conversations survey of 3,487 young people from 13 countries across Africa and Europe. We asked three of the young people involved in helping develop the survey to reflect on what they perceived as the main similarities and differences between the responses of African and European respondents to the survey. All responses have been edited for clarity.

Lucy Fagan — UK

I expected the survey would reveal a few similarities between the two continents but that it would principally show that youth in Africa and Europe prioritized different issues.
I was surprised by the similarities among respondents across both continents specifically in reference to issues like corruption. While it was quite shocking to see just how many young people from across Africa felt like corruption was a big challenge, it was even more surprising to see that a large number of European respondents also said corruption was an issue facing their nation. This is in stark contrast to the idea that many people hold of Europe and is indicative of the diversity of the continent. There are many countries with different political and social realities even within the European continent. This is an important reminder and hopefully a knowledge gap we can bridge on the Common Futures Conversations platform. (Fig. 6)

In terms of the differences that intrigued me, I was surprised that there was such a difference between how respondents in Africa and Europe prioritized the issue of unemployment. Among African respondents it was seen as a major challenge but seemingly not so much for the European ones. It struck me as interesting because I know that there are significant challenges in Africa around unemployment, but in Europe, and the UK specifically, I know the job market is a big issue facing young people.

The other difference I found notable was how respondents ranked climate change. Most European respondents selected climate change as the issue they most wanted to talk to people in their age group about. But this was not the response in Africa. This was compelling because climate change is such a big issue in Europe so it was interesting to see that the issue didn’t rank so highly in Africa. In the last couple years, climate change has rapidly risen on the political agenda in Europe. If go you go anywhere in Europe, young people are talking about climate change, they are angry and motivated to act. (Fig. 2)

 

Jean Désiré Kouassi — Côte d’Ivoire

It was interesting to see that poverty was a priority for respondents in both Europe and Africa. If you look at what Africans said, the problem that they felt most pressing was poverty. To compare responses, 23 per cent of African respondents said this and 22 per cent of Europeans. I had never previously thought that poverty was conceived to be a cross-cutting issue across Africa and Europe. In the past poverty has been an issue that is much more synonymous with Africa so I thought it positive to see that it was also something that youth in Europe were concerned about. It’s an interesting challenge to the assumption that poverty is exclusively an issue in the developing world. (Fig. 8)

But the issue of poverty is not singular — it is part of a mutually reinforcing cycle involving other issues like education, employment and migration. For example, when we interviewed people for the survey, they said that people are poor because they are not educated or the education they received is not adaptable to their job. Poverty for them is just the result or the impact produced by unemployment or the lack of education.

Salome Nthenya — Kenya

 

When I looked at the results, the first thing I noticed was the difference between the issues prioritized by African and European respondents. It made me wonder if the reason for the disparity in prioritization was because Europeans have managed to already tackle some of the primary challenges the African continent is facing?

Take for example unemployment. It came out as very conspicuous among African respondents compared to European ones which indicated to me that African youth are really struggling a lot with unemployment while Europeans are not.

I was surprised the issue of health was not prioritized by more respondents because I see it as a very serious issue especially in Africa. In Kenya, it is a very serious challenge. Access to health care and public hospitals is difficult to get, the availability of medicine and medical equipment is unreliable and the ratio of doctors to patients is extremely small. Before going to a public hospital, you think, if I go, I will have to line up, may not even see a doctor and, even if I do, I might not get any medicine. So, it was especially interesting to me, given this experience, that young people did not want to speak about health. (Fig. 3)

 

This post is part of a series reflecting on the results of the Common Futures Conversations survey of 3,487 young people from 13 countries across Africa and Europe. We asked young people a range of questions about the how they engage with news and political discussions online. When asked to select the social channels they thought to be reliable sources of information and news, these were the results.

 

We asked three of the young people involved for their perspectives on why young people might not see social media as a useful forum for political debate. All responses have been edited for clarity.

Jacopo Bencini - Italy

I think that an individual who’s already involved in politics to some extent will find no incentive in participating in political events hosted on social media, as he/she will always prefer to participate at in-person events for a variety of reasons for instance: direct and impactful interaction with targeted political stakeholders; direct interaction with their own network; recognition; the possibility to speak up in a qualifying setting; incentives in terms of network-building; and both online and offline visibility. The sample size of our survey is indicative of this.

More than one third of surveyed people — predominantly urban, middle class, politicized individuals — have already started their professional life. Another one third have already completed their education and, in general, they are already politically or socially active in their country — this being particularly true for the Italian respondents.

All these characteristics together, combined with other findings from the survey, suggest an already average high degree of participation by respondents in local or national political life. Politically-engaged youth are also acutely aware of fake news and distortions arising from and inside social media conversations and may avoid online forums for that reason. According to our survey findings, young people see the participation of an expert as a clear incentive to participation so it may also be fair to suggest that conversations on social media are avoided as individuals feel like they are losing time without any personal takeover or political incentive.

Grace Kamere - Kenya

In Kenya, young people have become apathetic because of empty promises from politicians. Kenyan leaders often entice young people with issues targeted at their demographic during elections but solutions never materialize in the long run.

Online political events are not perceived as ‘serious’ events compared to physical meet-ups. They are often seen as a forum with too much talk and too little points being actualized. They are also unattractive because they lack the human touch that comes with physical events. In many ways human contact enables participants to hold others accountable to the promises made.

Despite Kenyan youth being active on social media — especially on Twitter where we have our small army of #KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) — they are reluctant to be involved in discussing political issues online.
Holding a political event on social media is also not enticing for young people because of the consequences that may follow. In the recent past, activists have been arrested for openly stating their political opinions on social media so young people do not view social media as a safe space where they can openly discuss their political opinions.

There is also a lot of distrust of online sources of information. During the 2017 general elections, the government stated that NGOs were funding the opposition party and hence their programmes were no longer impartial. While this wasn’t true, it created a shift on how young people engaged with organizations working within the scope of governance.

Mirabelle Morah - Nigeria

From the point of view of young Nigerians, like myself, politicians in our country make too many promises during election campaigning that are rarely acted on once they are in office. As a result, whenever political conversations come up, especially online, we take everything with a pinch of salt and are sceptical about their validity and truth. From our perspective, it is one thing to make lofty promises online, but backing them up with physical actions is another. This outlook is dangerous because it has caused many young people to grow apathetic towards political issues and institutions. They feel as if their opinions and voices do not matter and they are only used for their votes in elections. At the end of the day, we know that the decision-makers are still the same old men who have been managing the country for years.

In Nigeria, safety is also a barrier to political involvement, especially online, when personal information can be easily accessed. While safety is an issue for everyone in Nigeria in relation to politics, it is especially discouraging for young people. During the survey, we approached a very popular figure in Nigeria to help us promote the project but they said they did not want to get involved. Why? Because they did not want to be affiliated with anything political in the country due to the nature of their job.

We asked three of the young people involved in conducting the survey why they thought education was the issue most people would spend $1 billion on. All responses have been edited for clarity.

Wadi Ben-Hirki — Nigeria

I think money can be a solution to gaps in education because it’s a principle means of access. In Nigeria, if you go to school, you must pay fees, and if you go to the hospital, you have pay for medical care. You can’t do anything without money.

Respondents choosing to invest in education, indicates that they prioritize it and I think this is because education is at the centre of many issues. Spending money on education has a circular effect: it links to other priorities such as security, employment and many other issues that we’re trying to solve.

When you fight poverty and unemployment through investing in technical education, you’re also fighting insecurity. Through improving personal security you may also lessen incentives for people to venture into social vices like armed robbery and internet fraud.

Bruno Mourinho — Mozambique

Simply put, I think money is a good solution to faults in education because it provides the basic resources to improve the overall system. Almost everything in an education system is dependent on, and can be improved by, money. For example, in Mozambique, young people are taught the same curriculum that our parents were. The curriculum has not been updated to address the reality of the 21st century and the demands of the new job market. To tackle this, governments can invest in more creative types of education to equip students with real skills that will make them more employable.

Education is also the basis of a successful society and a good system of education will help create a successful economy through fighting poverty, pollution and unemployment.

In cases where the solution to issues are more dependent on people, and not resources and policy, investing in education is especially important. Take for example the issues of pollution and throwing away plastic. The government can’t just say we’re not using plastic anymore. People need to be educated on why throwing plastic in the garbage or on the street is bad and why recycling or using renewable resources is good. It’s more of a question of education and goodwill. But accomplishing this needs to start from the roots — no matter where you are in the world. Education is an essential bottom-up solution.

Nicoleta Prostean — Romania

Education is the core of any society in the world. Many things like employment or crime are just effects, or consequences, of the quality of an education system.

However, investing in education is a long-term project, in that you’re not going to see the effects right away. But, at the end of the process, you’re going to see improvements not only in literacy or education but in employment, social integration, living standards, security and overall the development of society.

Take for example what is currently happening in Romania. We just had elections where we chose our representatives in the EU elections. There were, as never before, a lot of people who voted — voter turnout was around 50 per cent which was a direct consequence of a better education over the past few years. But this was also the result of the improved education of the Romanian diaspora living and working abroad. There are now around 4 million Romanians living and working abroad who went to their local Romanian embassies, voted and directly influenced the election outcome at home. Think about how much we could increase voter turnout if we invested in education in Romania itself.