Book Review: Youth-Led Social Movements and Peacebuilding in Africa edited by Ibrahim Bangura

Abstract

The contributing authors in Ibrahim Bangura’s edited volume, Youth-Led Social Movements and Peacebuilding in Africa, highlight young people’s struggles to effect social, economic, and political change across the continent, and the tendency of state authorities to suppress youth movements, often violently. In her review of the volume, Deanna Pittman extends Bangura’s analysis of African states’ “gerontocracy” to observe that feminist scholars have long noted the linkages among age- and gender-based exclusion in political processes and the patriarchy. Pittman reissues Bangura’s call to action for the EiE field: give young activists a platform and include them as essential stakeholders and participants in EiE decisionmaking. She concludes by remarking that consciousness-raising and learning happen in and through social movements themselves.