Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the role of children and young people in development through “Education for All”. It analyses the negotiations of children and youth concerning education policy, their family’s need to secure a livelihood as pastoralists in southern Ethiopia and their own visions of the future.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses how the international policy "Education for All" affects childrens' and young peoples' lives in southern Ethiopia. As the needs of subsistence oriented (agro-)pastoralism are hardly compatible with the national school system, conflicts between families and state agencies arise, in which children and young people are at the centre. As children and young people are crucial to the maintenance and reproduction of society, most Hamar families want to educate their children in their traditional way and thus send only one son to government school. In contrast to this, the Ethiopian government requires school attendance for all children in the name of promoting national development. Amidst this conflict of interest, children and young people are social actors who have their own visions of development, education and their future. Thus, students from (agro-)pastoral families have to negotiate diverging expectations of relatives, the government requests and their own aims. With the argument that going to school is a human right, teenagers sometimes run away from their families and enter boarding school. However, school life in town also comes along with many challenges and multiple dilemmas that will be discussed in my paper.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in South Omo Zone, particularly in Hamar Woreda, this paper explores the role of young people as "makers and breakers" (Honwana, de Boeck 2005) of development strategies. By doing so, it highlights the perspectives and actions of those mostly affected by development through education efforts, namely the students.