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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • From the Wilson Center

    One Country, Two Stories: Marc Sommers on Rwandan Youth’s Struggle for Adulthood

    March 29, 2012 By Stuart Kent

    Almost an entire generation of Rwandans is confronting the prospect that they are going to be failed adults, said Marc Sommers, a fellow with Woodrow Wilson Center’s Africa Program and visiting researcher at Boston University’s African Studies Center.

    Sommers explains in this interview how, almost two decades after garnering attention for the international failure to intervene in one of modern history’s greatest human tragedies, the Great Lakes state is the site of two competing narratives: Rwanda as a model of success, in classical development terms, and Rwandan government policies as controlling and constraining its young people.

    Sommers launched Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood, on these and other challenges facing Rwandan youth, in February at the Wilson Center.

    “There has been some really innovative development work that has been…spearheaded by the President of Rwanda and by his government,” said Sommers. Government efforts to limit corruption, ensure efficiency in governance, and attract private investment suggest, at one level, a bright future for the state. But the government has also instituted restrictions that limit the social and economic options of a wide swath of the country’s youth.

    The regime in Rwanda before the genocide was also seen as a model of development, said Sommers. Clearly, “we know that assessment was not accurate,” and it’s troubling that we have to make a human rights qualification about the progress made today as well, he said.

    <“The prerequisite for a male youth to become a man is…to build a house,” Sommers explained. But, “there is a housing emergency and it’s fueled, it’s exacerbated, by the policies of the government.” All new houses are required to be built on specific plots of land – “imidugudu” – which specify a minimum size requirement.

    The impact of these restrictions is not limited to men either. In Rwanda, “a female youth can’t become a woman unless she has someone to marry, and if a male youth can’t finish his house, who’s she going to marry?” Sommers said. To further complicate matters, those young people who attempt to escape traditional prerequisites for adulthood by migrating to the rapidly growing capital of Kigali face “very severe constraints” on informal market activities such as street vending.

    Sommers suggested that government restraints on the construction of housing and on informal economic activities need to be reformed and loosened if Rwanda’s young men and women are to have a chance to become full, socially accepted, and economically productive members of society.

    Video Credit: Sean Peoples/Wilson Center.

    Topics: Africa, demography, development, economics, From the Wilson Center, gender, Rwanda, video, youth
    • RWAKABI

      You are surely misrepresenting Rwanda. All govts the world over put up laws, bylaws, regulations and standards and thats what govts do the world over. Centralised settlement (IMIDUGUDU) aims at giving the poor social amnities like schools, power
      , hospitals and roads nearer to where they leave. This too aims at consolidating land as a policy because Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa.
      Resistance to change is one aspect of human nature not only existing amongst some illiterate Rwandans BUT also in The US against MEDICARE much as they are more informed. There are always two sides of the story MR SOMMERS therefore do more reaseach and inquiries. Thanks.
      RK

    • SommersMarc

      You are very right about the resistance to change among most Rwandan youth. 'Stuck' contains no misrepresentation of the facts. Rwandan government officials confirmed every major
      finding in the book, from evidence of a housing crisis and the inability
      of most youth to become adults to the desperate situation facing poor
      urban youth. Many Rwandan government officials also made it very clear during interviews that government regulations are making it virtually impossible for most male youth to build houses and for urban youth to economically succeed in the informal economy.

    • http://www.facebook.com/geoff.dabelko Geoff Dabelko

      Marc is just one of the excellent speakers assembled for a youth in conflict affected states in Africa conference at the Wilson Center April 17th. Tune in tomorrow morning at http://www.wilsoncenter.org for what promises to be an excellent session.

    • Anonymous

      So sad that USA students have to "learn about Africa" from peole like Marc. How more cliché can you be ??!!

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